Description
Start Date-End Date: 05/24/2022-05/24/2022
Land Manager Office: Grow Local Colorado
Land Manager Contact: Barbara Masoner
Funding Partner:
Programmatic Partner:
Summary: Registration opens March 1. Plant vegetable gardens with Grow Local Colorado! For volunteers ages 8+.
Description: Project photo by Cosima Reichenbach
Where You'll Be:
Observatory Park is a small, yet spacious park near the University of Denver (DU) campus. Home to DU's historic Chamberlin Observatory, the park also boasts century-old trees, an extensive playground area, and vast open fields perfect for picnicking or a pickup game of Frisbee.
What You'll Do:
Looking for an easy way to get outside and give back to your community? Look no further! Through our long-standing partnership with Grow Local Colorado, volunteers ages 8+ will spend the morning preparing and planting vegetable gardens in Denver's Observatory Park. While Grow Local will maintain the gardens throughout the summer, VOC will return in the fall to help harvest the vegetables, which will be donated to local residents in need.
Thank you to our partners at United for their support of our Healthy Community Projects!
Why It Matters:
The vegetables that volunteers plant will be harvested throughout the growing season and donated to local food banks, homeless shelters, and families in need. This partnership with Grow Local Colorado creates a more connected community; demonstrates the beauty and efficacy of edible gardens; inspires residents to plant their own vegetable gardens; and contributes to a more sustainable food chain by reducing our carbon footprint.
About Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC)Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC) is the state's oldest, largest, and leading outdoor stewardship nonprofit organization. Founded in 1984 to motivate and enable people to become active stewards of Colorado's natural resources, VOC has engaged nearly 128,000 people in more than 1,000 volunteer projects for a donated labor value of $26 million. Through award-winning youth and volunteer programs, leadership training, capacity-building programs, and collaborative efforts with nonprofits and land management agencies, VOC is an invaluable resource in Colorado, especially as our outdoor stewardship needs are approaching near-crisis levels. For more information, visit www.voc.org or call 303-715-1010.
Latitude/Longitude: 39.675242915410934, -104.95299271639198
Additional Information:
Camping Available: No
Physical Difficulty: Easy
High Altitude Project: No
Desired Number of Volunteers: 5
Total Adult Volunteers Attended: 4
Total Youth Volunteers Attended: 0
Total Volunteer Days: 4
Total Unique Volunteers: 4
Total Volunteer Hours: 12.5
Staff Hours: 13.5
Stipend Hours: 0
Project Summary: On Tuesday, May 24th, four VOC volunteers met at Observatory Park to help Grow Local Colorado plant seeds and seedlings for the 2022 growing season. In addition to our four volunteers, we had three staff members on site (Anna, Ben, and myself), as well as one representative from Xcel, one of our sponsors. Anna facilitated conversation with the Xcel representative, while Ben and I worked alongside Barbara Masoner (Grow Local) and the volunteers to plant approximately 440 seedlings.
Successes and Challenges: Successes:Our group finished planting within the 2-hour timeframe, which seemed to be an appropriate amount of time for the work we had set forth to do;the previous night's rain made the soil easy to work with; and the garden had been freshly tilled by Denver Parks & Recreation just moments before the project started.
Challenges: Volunteers had to step carefully to avoid compacting the freshly-tilled soil (using the brick pavers that were available on site was helpful)
Lessons Learned: Having the soil tilled in advance happens a bit last-minute with Denver Parks & Recreation staff, but it helps speed the actual planting process along quite a bit. It would have taken much longer if the volunteers had to remove the cover crops and weeds before the planting began.
Special Notes:
Stewardship Education:
Key Concerns or Comments from Staff or Volunteers:
Description of Accidents/Incidents:
Description of Work Completed:
Details
| 8 and older |
