Grow Local Colorado

Grow Local Colorado started out with one garden in Denver’s Civic Center Park in May of 2009. A group of concerned citizens was looking for a project that would reflect food equity, sustainability, and community to counter the effects on our community of the Great Recession. A vegetable garden was the natural choice. Then Mayor Hickenlooper offered one of the flower beds in the park, a perfect location in the center of our community.

Since 2009 we have grown from one garden location to twenty. Our gardens are in Denver Parks, at the Governor’s Mansion, churches, schools, partnering organizations’ facilities and even in a few back yards with all of the produce going to local food relief organizations.

Last year we harvested 10,500 pounds of produce from 20 gardens, gleaned 11,000+ pounds of fruit from local fruit trees which was all provided to 33 different organizations utilizing 1100+ adult volunteers and 700+ youth volunteers.