Green thumbs, warm hearts help harvest hope for needy

Volunteer gardening group has sprouted into citywide effort

By Burt Hubbard
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

Five years ago, Anna Belle Gonzales saw some strangers surveying the lot across the alley, behind her north Denver home.

It had been vacant for several years since a fire had destroyed the greenhouses and turned it into a party hangout for teens.

The strangers were from Denver Urban Gardens, and the lot was about to become a food source for the neighborhood and local charities.

"They asked me if I wanted to be part of it, and I said yes," Gonzales said. "I've been a part of it ever since."

This year, spaghetti squash went to the Sisters of the Poor, pumpkins were distributed among the neighbors, and Gonzales' granddaughter took a couple of vegetables and pictures of others to class for show and tell.

The garden plot at West 38th Avenue and Shoshone Street is one of about 80 scattered throughout the Denver area. They are tucked into schoolyards, next to churches and part of open-space projects, said David Rieseck, co-director of Denver Urban Gardens.

Others are donated by corporate owners until they are developed. Rieseck estimates about 20 gardens have been lost to development over the years.

Rieseck and Michael Buchenau started the program in 1985 with three lots in the Highlands neighborhood in north Denver.

The program matches vacant parcels with families or groups. Denver Urban Gardens helps set up the irrigation system and gives the gardeners seeds and transplants each spring.

"It kind of gives everybody, mostly seniors and low-income folks, a boost in the spring to get them rolling," Rieseck said.

The organization added training to its services in 1998.

"Before, we got them land and water and said good luck," he said.

Now, the process of training and organizing neighborhood groups takes about a year before they turn their first spade of dirt.

It has grown from an all-volunteer organization in 1985 to a group that employs six full-time and two part-time workers, Rieseck.

By 1993, the organization's board had raised enough money to hire Rieseck and Buchenau full time.

At Manual High School, teens grow plants inside the school during the winter and distribute them throughout the northeast Denver neighborhood in the spring.

In southeast Denver, 90-year-old Mohommad Ayub Mommandi from Pakistan oversees an army of seniors he has passed his gardening skills on to over the years.

"He refers to them as children," Rieseck said.

The gardening conditions in Pakistan are similar to Colorado's, Rieseck said.

Not all the gardens in Denver produce food for the table.

Some have been landscaped with trees and shrubs to spruce up an ugly piece of vacant land, he said. Others have been jazzed up with murals, sculptures and seating areas.

Art classes use them as training grounds for their students, Rieseck said.

For Gonzales, the garden became a family affair this year with her husband, daughter, son, granddaughter and two cousins tilling the soil.

Their haul included five types of tomatoes, five kinds of chilies, sweet peas, green beans, watermelons and two kinds of cucumbers, she said.

Some of the food went to their dinner table, but most of it was given away. Gonzales delivered some to the elderly from her church, while other food went to the Sisters of the Poor.

"We have done quite a bit of giving," Gonzales said.

December 15, 2000