A Few Days in Colorado
By Marvin Miller, AIB President
A business trip recently took me to Colorado, where I visited with greenhouse growers for the better part of three days. On my last morning, a slight diversion took me to the planting of a community garden. A local grower had supplied vegetable plants to help 13 different community gardens located throughout the city. The project worked with Denver Urban Gardens (DUG), a 25-year-old local non-profit dedicated to exposing people to the benefits of getting outside to enjoy nature, the Denver Public School System, and for this particular event, Burpee Home Gardens®.
The event I attended was at Fairview Elementary School in Denver’s Sun Valley neighborhood, just south of Mile High Stadium, where the NFL’s Denver Broncos play. During the planting, which was covered by the local CBS and NBC television affiliates, I had a chance to talk to the school principal, Norma Giron.
I could tell Ms. Giron was a dedicated and caring individual. As she explained the demographics of the school population and the neighborhood, I could tell passion was also a requirement to survive in this particular school and relatively poor (economically) neighborhood. When she first arrived at the school 10 years ago, the school had no playground. Seeing an opportunity, Ms. Giron had a playground established across the street on the footprint of the old school, which had sat idle since the “new school” was built in the 1970s. A year later, a community garden was established on the parcel adjacent to the playground.
Ms. Giron recounted how the early days of the garden included vandalism, stolen tools, and graffiti. A few years into the project, however, vandalism of all kinds almost disappeared. Ms. Giron attributed this, in part, to former students who had aged and become neighborhood role models, who would not tolerate damage to the community’s garden. In addition, since produce from the garden, which gets sold at the corner farmer’s market, provided the only local source for fresh fruits and vegetables within a 10- to 12-block area, residents of the neighborhood felt an obligation to keep the garden productive and free from strife.
I asked Ms. Giron if she had detected any changes to the school or the neighborhood as a result of the garden. Answering in the affirmative, Ms. Giron recounted how in the early days, discipline was a bigger issue in the school. Parents would take little interest in the school or, it seemed, their children, most often ignoring requests for parent-teacher conferences and the like. After a few years of interacting at the community garden, parents not only responded to requests from teachers, but parents began investigating ways to become more involved in the classroom. Needless to say, Ms. Giron was very thankful for the community gardening effort and its associated results.
The Denver Urban Gardens organization is quite special. For 25 years, DUG has helped to establish a network of community gardens throughout Metro Denver. DUG serves as a technical resource, helping neighborhoods with securing land, designing and building community gardens, supporting garden organization, leadership, outreach and maintenance, utilizing gardens as extraordinary places for learning and healthy living, and linking gardens with related local food system projects and policy. DUG interacts with over 32,000 individuals annually.
As I travelled throughout the greater Denver area, I detected a real appreciation for horticulture, one that I had not quite appreciated during any of the previous trips made there over the last 30 years. Surely, it was apparent in the inner-city work seen at Fairview Elementary. But I also felt this way during the customer visits made over the three days. In greenhouse after greenhouse, I could tell growers were readying planters, hanging baskets, and window boxes, not just for retailers getting ready to sell to the public, but also for any number of communities directly and/or for landscapers who had city contracts. In one such operation, I was told plants were being produced for a dozen different cities.
Ironically, as I asked growers about their knowledge of America in Bloom, I was amazed at how few knew about our organization. Indeed, I had been suspect, as we’ve only had two Colorado cities enter our AIB contest over the nine contest years. I knew we had a secret that needed to be shared. Perhaps, during this fall’s National League of Cities’ Congress of Cities, which will be held in Denver, the secret will be shared further.
But the truth is many Coloradoans already understand the power of plants in their lives. Certainly the folks at Denver Urban Gardens understand the power of plants after their 25 years of helping local groups establish neighborhood community gardens for all of the social benefits that gardening can bring. School principal Norma Giron also serves as a testament to the power of plants and gardens to change neighborhoods and attitudes. The many Colorado cities that are already beautifying their entrances, their streets, their business districts, their municipal buildings, their parks, and their neighborhoods already understand the power of plants to help them be more competitive when folks look for a place to live, for a place to do business, or for a place to vacation. And certainly many of the people who choose to call Colorado home do so because of the inherent beauty of the natural surroundings. It just may mean folks are unaware there is an organization that can help advocate for city beautification with horticulture as its focus; unaware, perhaps, because beautification comes so naturally.
But maybe there are folks in Colorado or elsewhere that could learn about the special power of plants to affect their lives if only they knew about America in Bloom. So, please do us a favor and tell folks about AIB. Or just send them to our AIB web site at http://www.americainbloom.org/. Let people know about the power of both being around plants and of having plants around them. Let them know we can help them plant pride in their communities!
A business trip recently took me to Colorado, where I visited with greenhouse growers for the better part of three days. On my last morning, a slight diversion took me to the planting of a community garden. A local grower had supplied vegetable plants to help 13 different community gardens located throughout the city. The project worked with Denver Urban Gardens (DUG), a 25-year-old local non-profit dedicated to exposing people to the benefits of getting outside to enjoy nature, the Denver Public School System, and for this particular event, Burpee Home Gardens®.
The event I attended was at Fairview Elementary School in Denver’s Sun Valley neighborhood, just south of Mile High Stadium, where the NFL’s Denver Broncos play. During the planting, which was covered by the local CBS and NBC television affiliates, I had a chance to talk to the school principal, Norma Giron.
I could tell Ms. Giron was a dedicated and caring individual. As she explained the demographics of the school population and the neighborhood, I could tell passion was also a requirement to survive in this particular school and relatively poor (economically) neighborhood. When she first arrived at the school 10 years ago, the school had no playground. Seeing an opportunity, Ms. Giron had a playground established across the street on the footprint of the old school, which had sat idle since the “new school” was built in the 1970s. A year later, a community garden was established on the parcel adjacent to the playground.
Ms. Giron recounted how the early days of the garden included vandalism, stolen tools, and graffiti. A few years into the project, however, vandalism of all kinds almost disappeared. Ms. Giron attributed this, in part, to former students who had aged and become neighborhood role models, who would not tolerate damage to the community’s garden. In addition, since produce from the garden, which gets sold at the corner farmer’s market, provided the only local source for fresh fruits and vegetables within a 10- to 12-block area, residents of the neighborhood felt an obligation to keep the garden productive and free from strife.
I asked Ms. Giron if she had detected any changes to the school or the neighborhood as a result of the garden. Answering in the affirmative, Ms. Giron recounted how in the early days, discipline was a bigger issue in the school. Parents would take little interest in the school or, it seemed, their children, most often ignoring requests for parent-teacher conferences and the like. After a few years of interacting at the community garden, parents not only responded to requests from teachers, but parents began investigating ways to become more involved in the classroom. Needless to say, Ms. Giron was very thankful for the community gardening effort and its associated results.
The Denver Urban Gardens organization is quite special. For 25 years, DUG has helped to establish a network of community gardens throughout Metro Denver. DUG serves as a technical resource, helping neighborhoods with securing land, designing and building community gardens, supporting garden organization, leadership, outreach and maintenance, utilizing gardens as extraordinary places for learning and healthy living, and linking gardens with related local food system projects and policy. DUG interacts with over 32,000 individuals annually.
As I travelled throughout the greater Denver area, I detected a real appreciation for horticulture, one that I had not quite appreciated during any of the previous trips made there over the last 30 years. Surely, it was apparent in the inner-city work seen at Fairview Elementary. But I also felt this way during the customer visits made over the three days. In greenhouse after greenhouse, I could tell growers were readying planters, hanging baskets, and window boxes, not just for retailers getting ready to sell to the public, but also for any number of communities directly and/or for landscapers who had city contracts. In one such operation, I was told plants were being produced for a dozen different cities.
Ironically, as I asked growers about their knowledge of America in Bloom, I was amazed at how few knew about our organization. Indeed, I had been suspect, as we’ve only had two Colorado cities enter our AIB contest over the nine contest years. I knew we had a secret that needed to be shared. Perhaps, during this fall’s National League of Cities’ Congress of Cities, which will be held in Denver, the secret will be shared further.
But the truth is many Coloradoans already understand the power of plants in their lives. Certainly the folks at Denver Urban Gardens understand the power of plants after their 25 years of helping local groups establish neighborhood community gardens for all of the social benefits that gardening can bring. School principal Norma Giron also serves as a testament to the power of plants and gardens to change neighborhoods and attitudes. The many Colorado cities that are already beautifying their entrances, their streets, their business districts, their municipal buildings, their parks, and their neighborhoods already understand the power of plants to help them be more competitive when folks look for a place to live, for a place to do business, or for a place to vacation. And certainly many of the people who choose to call Colorado home do so because of the inherent beauty of the natural surroundings. It just may mean folks are unaware there is an organization that can help advocate for city beautification with horticulture as its focus; unaware, perhaps, because beautification comes so naturally.
But maybe there are folks in Colorado or elsewhere that could learn about the special power of plants to affect their lives if only they knew about America in Bloom. So, please do us a favor and tell folks about AIB. Or just send them to our AIB web site at http://www.americainbloom.org/. Let people know about the power of both being around plants and of having plants around them. Let them know we can help them plant pride in their communities!
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