In Westwood's food deserts, families prepare gardens for growing season
share
DENVER — Camila Quesada knelt in her backyard, a small trowel in hand, and surveyed the tilled rows of soil and compost.
To the outside eye, the patch might look like neat lines of dirt. To Quesada, the rows mark the early stages of her garden, which will provide fresh produce to her family in the months to come.
The start of spring means about 100 families in Denver’s Westwood neighborhood are waking up their gardens as they prepare for the growing season.
These families participate in Re:Vision’s family garden program. Re:Vision is a food equity nonprofit based in Westwood. It operates four urban farms — the newest one is launching this season in Osceola Park — and assists families in cultivating their own gardens.
The program started in 2009 with seven family gardens, serving 28 people. Now, there are 955 participants in the garden programs.
So far this season, there are 90 family gardens and 12 champion gardens, the latter of which are used by several families who don’t have space at their homes to keep a garden.
Re:Vision’s program isn’t the only urban garden initiative in Denver. Denver Urban Gardens, or DUG, manages more than 200 community gardens — most of them public — across the metro area. DUG also offers kits to help families start a garden at home.
The family garden program at Re:Vision is unique because it’s focused on serving the Westwood community. The organization hires people from the community so neighbors can help neighbors.
Westwood is considered a food desert, meaning its residents have limited access to affordable and healthy food. To fill that need, Re:Vision offers a no-cost grocery program for community members, with most of the produce coming from the organization’s urban farms.
Through the family garden program, residents learn how to grow their own vegetables at home. During the growing season, Candelaria Araiza said she doesn’t need to go to the store for vegetables because she grows enough in her garden to feed her family.
Araiza shares her garden plot with her neighbor. She said she grows enough produce to harvest at the end of the season and preserve for the winter.
“For me, it’s very satisfying to see how a tiny plant grows and bears so much fruit,” Araiza said in Spanish. “It gives us enough to eat all summer and winter, and it’s still enough to share with neighbors, friends and coworkers.”
Araiza started her garden four years ago. She said her teenage daughters, ages 17 and 19, eat more vegetables because they’re excited that it came from their yard.
Re:Vision hires and trains “promotoras” from the community to teach families about garden maintenance and health.
Promotora Leticia Manquera will work with 20 families this growing season — nine new families and 11 returning. She plans to start visiting their gardens in late April to help plant seeds.
Manquera has worked as a promotora for 11 years and has lived in Westwood for 14 years.
“It’s a really nice thing, being able to help other people and teach them the little bit that you know. It’s really gratifying when you go to the garden, and they’ve already harvested something, and the kids come out and say, ‘Oh, look there’s a cucumber, there’s a pumpkin,’” Manquera said in Spanish.
“It’s worth mentioning the benefit of bringing your culture to different countries, or the culture of planting, that you started planting from your childhood. That’s part of the culture of Hispanic families, where we garden.”
Households must have at least one child between the ages of three and 18 years old in order to participate in the family garden program. Quesada has five children, ranging in age from 15 years old to five months old. She started her garden four years ago.
Quesada said she loves teaching her children how to grow their own food so they can use the skills later in life. Her family grows peppers, green beans, cilantro, cabbage and tomatoes.
Around late September or early October, the promotoras help families put their gardens to sleep for the winter. This involves cleaning and weeding the garden and covering it with egg cartons to keep the soil warm.
In April, it’s time to wake the gardens back up. At this stage in the season, Re:Vision staff already delivered compost for families to spread over their existing garden beds, which adds nutrients to the soil.
After adding compost, they go over the garden with rototillers to move the soil around, improving drainage and air flow to create ideal conditions for planting seeds.
The next step is to add the drip irrigation system, in which families attach a hose to small plastic tubes that run the length of the garden and slowly deliver water to the soil, one droplet at a time.
Araiza said she has learned a lot about the irrigation system and how to best hydrate her garden without overwatering it.
Although she’s learned new techniques through the program, Araiza already came in with some experience growing food. Growing up, she helped her father harvest foods like beans and peanuts on larger plots of land that he worked on.
Now, she likes to spend about one to two hours in her garden every day during the growing season. Gardening is therapeutic and nostalgic for her.
“For me, it is a very beautiful experience, and it makes me remember my times when I was a child, when I used to help my dad plant,” Araiza said.
Families with gardens expect to see the first harvest in August.
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.