On a sunny spring Thursday afternoon in Garden City, friends Kendall Boots and Autumn Bloom planted their first seed to make fresh, healthy, produce for the community with their nonprofit.
The two were joined by officials from the Evans Area Chamber of Commerce for a ribbon-cutting to welcome Community Grows Land Works as a new chamber member and to show what’s to come in a few months in the backyard of the Clarence J. Krieger Community Center, 620 27th Street Road.
There, the chamber gathered around bare plots filled with dirt. But soon, Community Grows Land Works will plant various seeds — literal seeds this time — and with time, tomatoes, potatoes and other nutritious produce will sprout.
Once the garden is flourishing, the two friends hope to make the healthy produce grown there available to anyone, regardless of income status or identity.
“A lot of people have said it may seem a little ambitious,” said Boots, executive director and founder. “I tell people, ‘If you don’t dream and you don’t reach for the ceiling, you really don’t have any goals to obtain.’ The goal here is to dream big and then achieve things small steps at a time.”
Boots, a Windsor native, moved to Washington State seven years ago as a part of her sobriety recovery. While getting sober in Spokane, Washington, Boots saw and heard her co-workers struggling to make ends meet when it came to buying groceries, which inspired her to start the nonprofit.
Last year, Boots reached out to the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department about turning parks with open spaces into community gardens. The gardens continue to thrive there, she said.
Bloom, the nonprofit’s assistant director and director of Colorado operations, said discussions with officials in Crosby, Texas, are ongoing to explore starting gardens there. They’re planning to reach out to local food banks to build working relationships, she added, as well as forming plans to start a farmers market in Garden City.
“We have a lot of people who are supporting it, that are rolling with it and helping us any way that they can,” Bloom said.
Nothing has been planted in the garden yet, but Boots and volunteers plan to do that next month. They hope people can start picking up produce as early as June. If for whatever reason a person can’t make it to the garden, they’ll try to implement a delivery service to drop off food boxes to anyone, Bloom said.
As for the hours for the new gardens in Garden City, they’re tentatively 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Even though the current plots are at the Krieger Community Center, they’ll move the plots to a larger piece of land at 2725 6th Avenue Lane, Garden City, sometime this month, and that’s where people will go for what they need.
Bloom and Boots reiterated that the garden is for all walks of life, no matter what your financial status may be. Everyone is welcome because everyone is feeling the pinch of buying or finding food, Boots said.
“It’s literally everyone. There’s inflation everywhere,” Boots said. “It doesn’t even matter if you’re making six figures. You feel the inflation.”
Monthly grocery costs average about $1,366 for a family of four in Colorado, according to the financial advisement website Unbiased.com.
Thursday’s ribbon-cutting was the first seed planted in the bigger vision the friends share for their nonprofit. It’ll take time, some watering and patience, but they plan to grow anywhere they can find space to help communities access quality food.
Bloom and Boots plan on sharing more announcements soon, which can be found on their Facebook, Community Grows Land Works.
