Why Salt Lake City is looking to grow more community gardens
“Community gardens can absolutely be a piece of our future, but it’s got to be driven by a neighborhood. … If you want to see more of this in your neighborhood, help us identify those pieces of land and we’ll help you in the process.”
By Carter Williams,
Deseret News
Aug 28, 2022
Excerpt:
There is a reason that city leaders are interested in community gardens. They allow neighbors to mingle as they grow food together, and they help urban residents feel connected to the food they consume.
The new Harrison Community Garden is now the 18th associated with Wasatch Community Gardens throughout the region, which grew 26 tons of produce for 530 families last year alone, according to Georgina Griffith-Yates, the executive director of the organization. She said most of the gardens they coordinate are like Harrison Community Garden, in that people can pick up produce regardless if they plant the food or not.
“If you really think of 26 tons of food for 530 families, it’s not just going to those households. It’s going to their neighbors, it’s going to their community, it’s being dropped on the boxes when they walk when there’s excess produce to collect,” she said. “A community garden feeds just that, a community.”
But city leaders also see community gardens as a more productive use for spaces that aren’t big enough for parks at a time when the city is becoming denser because of its record growth, though it requires neighborhood support backed by Wasatch Community Gardens.
Not only does it fill in space, gardens help bring back agricultural uses at a time when the Wasatch Front’s growth squeezes out old farming land.
