Spring Is Springing
Time To Nurture Gardens & Kids
By Rebecca R. Born
Executive Director, GPHC, Inc.
It’s starting to feel like spring and in that mindset, GPHC is preparing for gardening. We need your help to get our garden as well as our neighbors’ gardens at their very best.
As some of you know, this year the city cut finding at Denver Urban Garden. As a result DUG won’t be able to provide as many vegetable seeds and starts this year. We are going to try to help fill that gap.
You can help
Do you only plant part of your seed packet? Label them and put them in baggies for us to distribute or plant.
Are you great at getting starts going? Consider donating a percentage of your plants for us to distribute or plant. If you have some time, we’d love if you’d come by our office and garden, at 2823 Fairfax St., and help us get our starts going.
Do you have any small plastic plant containers that you buy flats in laying around? We’d love those to get our starts going.
Are you an electrician? Perhaps you can help us get a grow light going in our greenhouse. Do you have a good tiller? We would love to borrow it for a week.
Redoing your yard or garden and have lots of good compost and topsoil? We’d love it!
Do you just have some muscles and time? Keep your eyes peeled on social media for our announced workdays, and we’ll get this in shape in no time.
Once all our gardens are in full swing, don’t forget to drop off any extra produce you have at the Greater Park Hill office to distribute during our Free Farmstand Mondays.
300 Bags Of Food A Week
Switching gears a little, our weekend supplemental food program is now going strong. Every week we now create 300 bags of food for at-risk children in Park Hill. Each bag contains enough food for two breakfasts, two lunches, and two snacks.
We endeavor to make each bag identical for ease of purchasing and to avoid hurt feelings among our young folks. This means that taking donations of food for this program has become unpractical. We are currently purchasing all the food for this program through Food Bank of the Rockies, Costco, Sam’s or King Soopers.
We do comparison shopping each week to make sure we are getting the best deal out there, but purchasing enough food for 1,200 meals plus snacks each week is a huge expense and time outlay.
If it is in your budget, we’d like you to consider making a small monthly donation to our Food Pantry for this program. $10 a month would be such a help. If you have a reliable vehicle and would like to help on shopping runs or to deliver to schools on Thursdays or Fridays, please contact us at director@greaterparkhill.org
All donations can be dropped off at the GPHC office at 2823 Fairfax St. The office is open Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Feel free to call if you have any questions; the number is (303) 388-0918.