Community Garden
“From the beginning God made a garden, so it’s no surprise if you feel closer to Him with your hands in the dirt and the sun on your back.”
Practice
Discover a community garden near you—check your city website, or visit the Denver Urban Gardens website.
Learn about growing food in the place you live.
Meet neighbors by working together in a garden.
Introduce friends, neighbors, or family members for a planting or harvesting day.
Our family first joined a community garden when our kids were in elementary school. At the time, we didn’t know much about growing food, and we lived in a townhome with a small shady yard that had yielded two seasons of disappointment. We quickly discovered that gardening in the company of others gave us access to a wealth of knowledge and opportunity. Alongside neighbors—many of whom we might not have met otherwise—we dug, planted, watered, and weeded, and slowly learned the rhythm of life in the garden.
Our garden plot became more than a place to grow vegetables. During a difficult season, the garden offered us an escape: a patch of earth where worries quieted under the sun and the simple work of caring for our growing plants became its own kind of comfort. Our children were welcomed and taught by others, learning both about gardening and about what it means to show up, work hard, and share life in community. We not only learned how to care for tomatoes and squash, but how to help each other carry the load—watering a neighbor’s plot when they couldn’t, celebrating a shared harvest, and offering both food and friendship across garden plots.
Participating in community isn’t easy. Just ask the director of our community garden…sometimes we need to be reminded to lock the shed because a wheelbarrow is missing, or the question needs to be asked about why a bottle of Roundup would be in the shed of an organic garden we all share—all opportunities to practice patience and grace and to be offered the same in return.
Practicing community gardening helps us fall in love with our neighborhoods. In a community garden, love grows alongside the carrots. If you’ve never joined one, you don’t need a “green thumb” to start—just a willingness to learn, and a heart open to the possibility that you’ll grow much more than food.
Becky Rinehart is the Operations Director of Sacred Place and deeply cares for the people and places around her.
