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MICHAEL BUCHENAU HAS SPENT MORE THAN 15 YEARS AS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF DENVER URBAN GARDENS. During his tenure, the organization has grown into a network of 90 gardens, serving a community of hundreds of gardeners across the city.

As Executive Director of Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) for more than 15 years, he’s witnessed a steady harvest of ways in which the simple act of joining together to turn the earth and nurture a seedling has bridged cultural and generational divides, bolstered economies, fed the hungry, improved public health, and even inspired artistic endeavors.

“There is a false notion about community gardens that they are only helping a small percentage of people,” says the Denver native and landscape architect. “But research is finding the gardens not only help people beyond their location, but are also affecting a whole bunch of layers of well-being, including emotional and mental health, social connection, feeling safer in your neighborhood, and inspiring people to help others.”

A four-year University Health Sciences research project aimed at measuring the impact of DUG’s efforts found that community gardens improve public health by modeling healthy lifestyles, physical activity, and nutrition. “They’re modeling environmentally sustainable practices like composting, water conservation, and collective environmental work,” Buchenau says. “The researchers are calling it ‘collective efficacy,’ meaning the community decides what steps to take to create change. If the project is initiated by the community, it has a greater chance of long-term success.”

Charged with a mission of providing technical assistance to neighborhoods interested in establishing community gardens, the 90-garden network DUG nourishes has become in many ways self-sustaining, extending DUG’s staff resources with a cadre of experienced volunteers from long-term, successful gardening projects. “I always envisioned at some point we’d have enough gardens established that they would start to connect and link into a citywide network. It took about a decade for that to happen, and now it’s really taking off.”

DUG tailors its approach to helping neighbors launch and maintain gardens based on neighborhood resources. In a community with ample resources such as Edison Elementary School, DUG plays a more advisory than hands-on role. “They had two landscape architects as parents, so we worked as a team with the blessing of the rest of the community to design it. What I was doing in those meetings was facilitating, providing information on what does and doesn’t work, and all along creating this ownership among the people. I learned long ago that if you do it all for them, they won’t necessarily take care of it.”

In low-income neighborhoods, the same idea of self-empowerment applies, but DUG staff members and volunteers provide greater up-front and ongoing assistance. “We’ll help them with design, fundraising, community outreach. You always want to have organizations connected to the gardens – local businesses, youth groups, churches, senior centers, artists – a diverse population of people and skills. To take a metaphor from nature: the more diverse, the more stable.”

DUG also provides technical advice on horticulture, composting, and water management. “My staff is very lean. The concept all along has been working with our network of volunteers. You can get a lot more capacity that way.”

Wherever located, gardens unify. “Gardeners hold potlucks during the season. They have book clubs and yoga in the garden, artists coming in to paint or draw or create permanent installations. Every season, two of our gardens hold an event called Art Farm, an art exhibit/cocktail fundraiser.”

Successful gardens evolve into a neighborhood’s core. “There’s a ‘place’ attachment. Research is finding that community gardens can actually improve real estate values, luring people to stay in their homes longer. People start to care more about their sidewalks and alleys. It’s really important in low-income areas. Many people who have come from South American or Mexican cultures, used to getting their food every day from the market, feel disconnected. They have to take the bus to a Walmart. They don’t grow anymore, they don’t walk anymore, there’s a terrible obesity epidemic. The culture that has kept them lean and healthy is gone.”

Enter the community garden in venues such as Fairview Elementary School (2715 W. 11th Ave.), one of the poorest in the DPS district, where the garden serves as a kind of living classroom, community center, and outdoor market. Launched to supplement science curriculum, the Fairview project has morphed into a program in which students have become full-blown community health ambassadors.

“We have a youth-run farmers market, chefs showing people how to prepare easy, affordable, healthy dishes out of produce grown. Suddenly the market has become this place on Sunday afternoons for people to walk to, meet their neighbors, and find out how to grow something and take it home and try it. We’re cultivating a pool of senior and older adult volunteers. A lot of these kids don’t have those kinds of connections. We have older adults once a week in the classroom, and in the garden and market throughout the summer. That also came out of the research study, a desire for a community of mentors and an interest among gardeners in giving back.”

DUG’sHealthy Neighborhood Network operates a skills bank of such volunteers gleaned from gardens citywide interested in mentoring, advocacy, technical assistance, fundraising, and the like. Established gardens such as Rosedale (across Logan St. from Harvard Gulch park) donate produce to feed the needy, and host an annual garage sale to support gardening projects in low-income neighborhoods.

DUG’s Delaney Community Farm manages interns and volunteers, and partners with nonprofits such as Women, Infants, and Children Supplemental Nutrition (WIC) program, the Colorado AIDS Project, Somali Bantu Farming Council of Colorado, and Project Angel Heart, to raise food while modeling healthy nutrition and lifestyle practices. DUG also works with Slow Food Denver and Learning Landscapes, working to transition DPS school grounds into effective outdoor learning/growing spaces.

DUG’s collaborative, community-initiated and -maintained approach enables the organization to continue to keep pace with a continually growing demand fueled by concerns over food affordability, transportation, security, and sustainability.

“If you really look at our economy, it’s very vulnerable from a food standpoint because it’s industrialized, internationally and nationally based. Any kind of interruption in prices caused by things from transportation costs to disease to potential terrorism could create a sudden food crisis. Growing more locally is a wise choice. You’re empowering the local economy and helping protect the environment. Right now, food is travelling 1500 miles to the consumer. We want mangoes year-round. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s created a lot of problems. It’s not like overnight, especially in Denver, we’re going to be able to grow everything we need, but we can move in the right direction.”

Buchenau admits it’s often a challenge to garden here. “Our lack of water and early frost; snow and hail. But no matter what, our gardens end up producing huge amounts of food.”

And he remains optimistic about the ancillary benefits. “It’s all about building trust, helping people see the skills they can offer the garden and the program. It’s an asset-based model that says, ‘What can you do? Are you good with people? Do you have an aptitude for gardening, teaching skills we can help foster?’ It can turn people’s lives around. It’s amazing to see a kid who’s been told he’s ignorant, lazy, can’t do anything right suddenly realize he’s good at something, and guess what? It helps other people, too.”

(Editor’s note: for more information about Denver Urban Gardens, visit www.dug.org, call 303-292-9900 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it )