Wasatch Community Gardens and their impact around Salt Lake City

Wasatch Community Gardens is a non- profit organization, started in 1989 by Crossroads Urban Center. It provides opportunity for many people in many different neighborhoods to start gardening. Ashley Patterson was the former executive director of the organization for 10 years from 2012-2022 as well as a board member from 2003-2009.

After being asked about where her passion for gardening came from she responded with, “My mom’s a farmer and my grandparents were immigrants from Ireland, and they grew all their food in their backyard. It’s just kind of something that the family has always done”. She also said “I just thought it was something that a lot of people were not doing as much as they used to do. And sometimes it’s because they don’t have a yard or they don’t have opportunities. I was really interested in making sure people who wanted to grow their own food had the opportunity to do so. The mission of Wasatch Community Gardens is to empower people to grow and eat healthy, organic, local food”.

There are around 20 community Gardens all around Salt Lake City, with WCG having 17 of their own. “Those are kind of a neighborhood based space, you don’t really want people coming all the way across town to use a community garden because they probably won’t garden there. They’ll think, ‘Oh, I got a plot, but it’s like 12 miles away, and you’ll never go”, said Patterson. “They can walk, ride a bike or take a very short drive. Then they will start to create a community. The gardeners themselves, start to really take a lot of ownership for the garden”.

The gardens are supported financially by contracts from cities, counties, municipal entities, schools, and donors. Ashley also added, “The neighborhood feel really helped (with fundraising). Kind of creating the support you need to keep those spaces really vibrant”. To keep the community support going, Wasatch Community Gardens puts on events such as plant sales and partnerships. The organization has partnered with the Salt Lake City school district, the Boys & Girls Club, as well as people in the Depot district and Rio Grande facing homelessness.

When asked about some notable successes Patterson mentioned the gardens on 8th South and 6th East that have a conservation easement on them. “So even if Wasatch community gardens goes away and has to sell that property, it will have to be farmed by someone, because that’s what the conservation easement says. I think that that’s a pretty notable achievement because we have so much new housing, parking lots and roads, and for sure we need all that. But, once those happen, it’s really hard to take it backwards. So that spot is permanently protected”. She also described her collaboration with the International Rescue Committee. The partnership created an opportunity for those who were new to the country to have their own space to grow their own food and still be able to still have a taste of home through their gardening. “The way I would sum it up is, the organization was really good at forming partnerships. That might be the best notable achievement. Instead of trying to do everything, we would sort of partner with other groups to do what we did really well, which to grow food with a lot of different kinds of people and make it fun and productive.

As of now Wasatch Community gardens plans to expand. “Let’s open a new garden every year! If we have the opportunity and if there’s land available. These lands are not typically owned by Wasatch Community Gardens. They’re owned by Salt Lake City or Salt Lake County. So they’ll identify parcels that might be good for a garden, and then we work together to get a garden going”.

As far as getting involved goes, Ashely highly recommends the volunteer program. You can find that at wasatchgardens.org and then contact the volunteer coordinator and ask for any opportunities to get involved.

When asked about any last thoughts she stated, “I think Judge should have a garden (on the new campus). It doesn’t have to be like this huge thing, but it’s really fun for people to use a as learning tool”.

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