Pick a tomato, sunflower at Salt Lake’s newest community garden, mayor says
She said the garden will provide “inspiration” and opportunity for those with entrepreneurial spirits in the neighborhood.
By Ashley Imlay
KSL.com
Aug. 4, 2021
Excerpt:
“It’s really a space for growing community, and it’s in a park that has community baked into its namesake. It’s not just a place where kids come to come together, but we have wonderful historic roots of this community here at Richmond Park,” Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said.
She thanked members of the city’s Parks and Public Lands Division, whom she said have put their hearts “in every brick and every piece of decomposed granite, and I think every tomato and potato that’s growing behind me today.”
“This is so exciting for me, I’m a council member, but in my real life, for my day-to-day job, I own two food businesses,” City Councilwoman Ana Valdemoros said. “And I started my business at a farmer’s market. … And when I started, I saw an opportunity to share a little bit of my culture with Salt Lake City by making empanadas.”
Valdemoros said she has witnessed the downtown farmer’s market “grow and grow and grow.” The area of the city where the new community garden was established has the highest demand for garden plots, she said.
“Richmond Park is located in one of the denser neighborhoods in the Central City planning area. It’s characterized by single family, multifamily housing units, where obviously they don’t have private, open space,” Valdemoros noted.
