What a great Harvest Season Celebration with a final work party, a brunch potluck with music, and a surprise visit from the ever popular Zander Farms llamas. Thank you to Cami and Mike for the fabulous entertainment and Sonja and Chris for educating our crew on your adorable llama mommas! Now it's time to VOTE below for your 2023 Leadership Team! Voting period is Nov 5-12. The 2023 Leadership Team will be announced Nov 13.
Season Wrap Up
Thank you all for joining this season en force for the Westside Work parties, Workshops on growing Dahlias (Gina), Warm weather crops (Jim), and Cooking with Garden Veggies (Laura). We had great turnouts for our Music in the Garden evenings with Laurie Dameron, Tim Merkel, Brandywine and the Mighty Fines, and The Humminbirds. We enjoyed potlucks together throughout the season to celebrate our 10 Year Anniversary as an organic community garden founded in 2012 by local community members. We'd like to thank Gina Schley and John Chisum for advocating for this space and making it happen along with so many gardeners and so much community support! Many of our gardeners helped build the original plot borders and continue to maintain the community spaces. We thank the City of Arvada and Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) for continuing to support our efforts to bring community together through organic gardening. We hope Rose Roots will continue to thrive, educate, and grow community for many decades to come!
Final season updates:
Let us know if you are (or are not) coming back on our Pre-Registration 2023 Form HERE. We hope to see you all again, and wish you happy trails if you will be moving on to other adventures.
We have tallied the Service Hours donated by our gardeners, which came to over 1,600 hours! What a great contribution to your community! As 12 hours are required per 15'x15' plot and 6 hours are required per 15'x7' plot or raised plot, we have tallied the hours completed per plot in the attachment below:
. Please let us know if we've made any mistakes in the tally, which we summed from your online entries. We know times get busy, and some of you prefer to donate $7/per hour as your contribution to the community, so we will get invoices out for those hours. The funds are used to continue to maintain this very special place for all of us and we thank you for all of your contributions.
HERE is an album of 2022 Season Highlights, and there were many!
It's time to VOTE for your 2023 Rose Roots Leadership Team! Our Steering Committee is made up of 1) 5 elected members and several 2) Appointed Members-At-Large per our Rose Roots Bylaws. Additionally we have dedicated Leads for specific areas, such as Food Bank Plot Lead, Produce Donation Lead and Kiosk Lead. We have more positions available for next season, such as Event Coordinator which could be shared by several people, so please let us know if you'd like to get more integrated in this wonderful community!
Find the Ballot HERE. Please vote by Nov 12, 2022. We thank all of our leaders past and present for making this entirely volunteer community garden a success!
HERE is an opportunity to provide feedback on how your season went, ideas for improvements, and suggestions for next year's leadership team. We value your feedback.
Here is information on our Candidates:
President: Laura Bennett
I started gardening 10 years ago on a "whim" at Rose Roots. I was fortunate enough to get a garden in the first year that Rose Roots became a garden and had no idea what I was doing. For me, the garden became a place to learn more about growing organic produce which is synonymous with my belief that eating organic is a healthier choice for both your body and environment. My first few years at the garden were spent learning about gardening, how to tend to the soil, what grows well in our climate and healing my body due to an autoimmune deficiency. I became interested in welcoming new gardeners with an orientation-as the energy from new gardeners is so "excitingly contagious". I have been fortunate to be part of the steering committee as Secretary, and would like to continue to be a part of the team. I am running for President as I believe that I can continue to bring value to the garden by effectively communicating both internally to gardeners and externally to our partners such as the City of Arvada and DUG. Thank you for the opportunity to continue to make Rose Roots Garden a beautiful space and community and I look forward to growing in 2023.
Vice President: Erin Newton
As a Rose Roots Gardener since we moved to Five Parks in 2013, I have worn many hats. I have developed our website, written our newsletters, performed on harp in the garden, taken minutes in monthly meetings, developed online collaboration functionality, worked as an event coordinator for our garden, and served as garden President. I have found this community to be supportive, inclusive, and a wonderful place to raise our two boys and spend time with my parents, who also garden here, and make very special friends. I love the garden mission which is to grow community through supporting sustainable local organic agriculture. I especially love how community gardening teaches resilience, humility, and offers the opportunity to connect with all ages and backgrounds. As a former geologist, I currently teach harp lessons, perform as as freelance harpist, and am currently re-training in the medical field. I look forward to continuing to serve our community with the time I can find, and am excited to work with our 2023 Leadership Team.
Administrator/Secretary: Shannon Sawyer
Hello! I’m Shannon Sawyer, interested in serving as your Administrator/Secretary. I’ve gardened in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest, so when we moved to CO, we filled our deck with a vegetable container garden while we watched the sun/shade pattern of our new yard for our future gardens—but we did not get a single harvest! Fast forward a year and Rose Roots came to the rescue! With the community at Rose Roots to learn from, we had a successful CO harvest this summer. Community gardening has been a great way to learn the ins and outs of gardening in a new climate while also making connections in our new city.
Membership Coordinator: Donna Neill
I have lived in The Village of Five Parks for about 11 years. During that time I passed by Rose Roots innumerable times with curiosity and interest. While I have always loved growing plants, as an elementary school principal, I didn’t think I had enough time to make gardening work. Then COVID. During the spring of 2020, I found myself working from home. I contacted Rose Roots leadership and was able to secure a plot. I have just finished my third year of gardening and have found it an absolute delight! I love the satisfaction of growing my own organic food and the fellowship with other gardeners is a definite plus. I am committed to organic gardening practices which reduce pollution, conserve water, reduce soil erosion, increase soil fertility and use less energy. Gardening without synthetic pesticides and fertilizers is also better for pollinators, birds, and animals. I have found Rose Roots gardening a valuable step in my commitment to leaving a smaller footprint. Now that I am mostly retired (hooray), it is time to give back to the Rose Roots community by taking on a larger role. I hope you will consider me for the position of Membership Lead.
Treasurer: John Malito
My wife Cindee and I have been gardening at Rose Roots Community Garden for the past three years and are already planning for our 2023 year.
There is something magical about walking through the gate of the garden. It’s as if a person is walking into a new world, absent all of the stress, strains, and cares of the day.
The garden has been a great experience for us. We came to the garden three years ago with enough gardener knowledge to fit inside a thimble.
Yet today, thanks to the many gardeners who have mentored and shared their knowledge and experiences with us, we find ourselves anxious to grow new types of food, taste new types of produce we would have once “turned our noses up to,” and experiment and learn how to be organic-minded gardeners.
But don’t ever make us grow sweet potatoes! Speaking for myself only, people should eat up all of the organic and non-organic sweet potatoes here on earth so that when we all die, and go to heaven, heaven will be absent of those horrible, nasty-tasting, and poor excuse of a potato type produce.
(Tell us how you Really feel John! No really, don't hold back ;)
Non-Elected Leads-More on these fabulous gardeners and their contributions later!
Operations Lead: Gary Williams
Operations Lead: Jim Richards
Special Projects Lead: Patty Sacks
Food Bank Plot Lead: Karel Hemler
Food Donation Lead: Cindee Malito
Kiosk Lead: Deb Harris
Note: We are compiling a Final season report with summary information from all our leads which we look forward to sharing with you.
We look forward to seeing many of you next season!
Stay Warm,
Rose Roots Leadership Team