Denver Urban Gardens

Gardens & food forests: dug's community Gardens are comprised of both public & private spaces. In 2023, they were managed by 350 volunteer garden leaders and cultivated by 17,700 of community gardeners. Community Gardens are a great way to grow fresh & healthy food for you and your family. Gardeners cultivate annuals (like tomatoes and pumpkin) each season, following the growing season from seed starting to putting the garden to bed. The diversity of our Gardens is reflected in their sizes, organizational structures, community cultures, and internal community agreements.dug's food forests emerged more recently with the support of the etkin family in 2022. In the years following, our food forest network has expanded to over 20 locations comprised of various food-producing tree & shrub plant varieties. Unlike community Gardens, food forests are a way to provide enduring support for the community, with perennial trees & bushes that grow year after year. Anyone is welcome to these spaces, and can pick berries or nuts as they'd like. Each unique space is supported by volunteer tree keepers who are trained to maintain the space and build community.

Education & engagement: dug's education programming has been supporting Urban gardeners across metro Denver for more than twenty years. Dug's programs are founded upon a deep respect for all people and their traditions, organic practices that regenerate the earth, and activating knowledge in diverse ways. Dug facilitates an adult and youth education as well as a community composter training program. In 2023, the adult and youth education program held 734 workshops and classes; the fees for one-third of attendees were pay-what-you-can. The community composter training program was attended by over 500 community members in addition to 300 dug gardeners across the front range.

Food access program: under the food access umbrella, dug has three unique programs- grow a garden, culturally inclusive seeds, and community seed distribution. Dug's grow a garden program connects individuals and community groups to seeds, seedlings, and education to get growing at home or in a dug garden. In 2023, grow a garden served 12,152 community members. The majority, 71%, of recipient households had a combined income of less than $50k. Like dug's other food access programs, the community seed distribution is designed to reduce the financial barriers involved in growing food at home or in a community garden. Dug's community seed distribution is the largest publicly available collection of free seeds in Denver. In 2023, community seed distribution distributed over 27k seed packets, which is approximately 10 million individual seeds. The culturally inclusive seeds program is designed to support community members with marginalized identities in dug Gardens by providing access to rare and specialty plant varieties selected with an emphasis on cultural inclusivity. Dug believes that meaningful and sustainable food access prioritizes foods that are familiar and desirable to you, no matter who you are. Through this program, dug supports a global array of growing and culinary practices in celebration of our shared diversity. In 2023, culturally inclusive seeds distributed 490 specialty seed varieties to dug gardeners.