A Bounty of Hope

Beyond the Harvest: The Role of Community Gardens and Volunteers in Building Sustainable Food Resilience

Today, with so much bad news permeating our feeds, people can feel defenseless to stanch the onslaught. You can donate money or sign petitions, but the hollow feeling of not enacting any real change persists. Barbara “Barb” Masoner reveals that this desire for tangible and physical change is what draws many volunteers to Grow Local Colorado. Grow Local enlists volunteers to plant, harvest, and tend plants that directly give produce to people in need. The physicality of this volunteerism is what keeps dedicated volunteers returning project after project. Grow Local Colorado partners with Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC) to engage its volunteer base, ensuring the massive undertaking of planting and harvesting gets completed. 

On a snowy Friday afternoon in April, I called Masoner to learn more about Grow Local. Starting the conversation with bane chitchat, I mentioned the unruly spring snowshowers, and Masoner casually remarked how she had started the morning organizing plants. She lightheartedly says she appreciates that the worst of the snow held off until she completed this task, but admits that her hands still ached from the abrasive cold hours later. With this offhand comment, I started to understand Masoners’ dedication to this organization and persistence despite unforeseen challenges. Masoner has served as the logistics and volunteer coordinator at Grow Local for the past ten years and has been critical to the success of this organization. Her passion for people and the natural world rings apparent in her words as she walks the line between realistic and optimistic. When I ask her to describe the mission of Grow Local in her own words, she starts with the basics: sustainability, building community, and food health.

She then elaborates on how these core tenets define Grow Local and characterize the structure of the organization. Masoner passionately talks about sustainability, emphasizing the significance of leaving the soil a “better place”, the conviction strong in her voice. She explains how Grow Local promotes soil resilience through various sustainable agriculture methods. Including intentionally not tilling the soil to preserve microbes, utilizing drip irrigation to prevent unnecessary water loss, mulching gardens to regulate temperature, and composting to retain organic matter in the soil. By sustaining soil health, Grow Local ensures the longevity of these gardens and their ability to serve future generations.

Regarding building community, Masoner stresses Grow Local’s focus on both mental and physical health, elaborating that this organization strives to locate their gardens at impactful, safe spaces. Grow Local has twenty garden sites spread across Denver, ranging from high-profile public parks in the heart of Capitol Hill to a location simply named “Andy’s backyard”. Through Grow Locals' wide range of garden locations, they adapt to fit the needs of many different community members, no matter what community entails for them. 

Masoner outlines the last Grow Local tenant through the lens of equitable food health. According to Masoner, local food pantries conducted a survey of critical items to patrons and fresh produce ranked second only after protein items. With fresh produce getting pricier, this statistic only becomes more important. When I asked Masoner how Grow Local decides what produce to plant, she gave me a bashful laugh. She explained that when Grow Local started, she had naively planted an abundance of Swiss chard and kale because of their high yields, but she soon learned that “nobody wanted that”. Now Grow Local instructs each garden to contact the food pantry in its community and ask what produce it needs. The most-requested items are tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peppers, cilantro, and greens. “We all have our own food experiences”, Masoner explains, and Grow Local strives to give people access to items that celebrate these experiences.

As we enter the spring months, Colorado is facing a historic drought. Colorado currently has the lowest snowpack in the last 30 years, and this snowpack is what feeds the reservoirs that Denverites use. When I ask Masoner about how Grow Local staff are feeling regarding the drought, she pauses for a second. “The level of anxiety in our group is up there”, she admits.

Currently, she explains that Denver Water is prioritizing community gardens, but Masoner laments that if we don’t see a lot more moisture, it might come down to restrictions or prohibitions on watering vegetable gardens. As the conversation takes a turn towards the bleak, Masoner explains that this action would result in “ thousands of thousands of pounds of fresh produce not going to food pantries”.

If this unprecedented drought was not concerning enough, the agriculture industry is facing compounding global issues. According to Masoner, as a result of current global conflicts, prices for fuel needed to transport produce are skyrocketing, and critical agricultural fertilizers are unable to pass through shipping lanes. The unfortunate deluge of drought, fuel prices, and fertilizer shortage is increasing produce prices and making organizations like Grow Local more and more critical. 

After Masoner outlines her greatest fears for this upcoming growing season, I ask about her greatest hopes. In a more aspiring tone, she explains that Grow Local has two new garden sites opening this season, one at SAFE House Denver and one at Benedict Mountain Park. Wistfully, she remarks on the “bounty of that”. Masoner also expresses her faith in the longtime partnership Grow Local holds with the stewardship nonprofit, Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC). This partnership started in 2012 and has been flourishing ever since. Masoner stresses that VOC “makes sure” over five thousand seedlings make it into the ground in just two weeks. This mass planting extravaganza is sustained by dedicated volunteers and community members who believe in Grow Local's mission. Masoner jokes about the VOC volunteers, saying she's never had a VOC volunteer whose mentality is “let's just get through with it”; instead, they find joy in the work itself. 

Today, with the proliferation of grocery stores, we are widely removed from our produce. Grow Local works to resurrect these connections with our food. That connection extends beyond simply growing food. During spring plantings, Barb and fellow Grow Local leader Lisa take the time to teach volunteers how to start and care for their own home gardens, occasionally even sending volunteers home with extra seedlings to begin growing produce themselves. During fall harvests, they have been known to share freshly pressed cider made from apples gleaned by Grow Local volunteers from local trees that could not otherwise be donated. These small moments of learning, sharing, and gathering together help cultivate not only gardens, but deeper relationships between people, food, and community. Masoner shares one experience of working with children at a Grow Local garden located at an elementary school. She details how their enthusiastic energy is contagious, as they are excited about every part of the experience. She specifically recalls the children being amazed while harvesting carrots, joyfully declaring, “this is where carrots come from”. As Masoner recalls this anecdote, I can hear the elation in her voice as she evokes the feeling of this youthful wonder. Despite well-founded fears about the upcoming growing season, Masoner’s interview has left me with a bounty of hope and inspired me to plant some produce for myself and my community. 

If you want to get involved with Grow Local and perhaps bring some tangible impact into your life, sign up on Grow Local website for the 2026 growing season or volunteer with Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado for the fall harvests. As Masoner explains, gardens need to be tended to at least once a week to be productive, so volunteers are always appreciated.