Colorado’s Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) – a nonprofit that promotes sustainable spaces – has received a $500,000 grant from the US Environmental Agency to install six new community gardens and nine food forests. The award comes about due to the association’s implementation of solutions to the “heat island effect” in Denver’s underserved communities. They have also received grants from the USDA and The Gates Family Foundation to further promote their work.
“Once you start putting in concrete and blacktop and buildings and glass and metal, the earth loses its ability to sort of absorb the heat, and instead it reflects it, and it raises the temperature,” the executive director of Denver Urban Gardens, Linda Appel Lipsius, said. “So when you go into downtown Denver or any city, or any place that doesn’t have trees or greenery, there’s a noticeable difference. So there’s going to be, you know, a five to 10 degree increase because there’s no greenery.”
To date, DUG has helped to create 200 community gardens and 24 food forests.
“Food forests are a really, really exciting development. So they’re these dense plantings of perennial food producing trees, bushes and vines, and then you’re also using land forms to capture water. And so considering the desert climate that we live in, it’s just a really intentional way to plant food trees. So we’re not just adding shade, but we’re adding food to the system,” Appel Lipsius said. “Barnum Orchard is what we call our flagship food forest. It’s bringing the community out. It’s giving the community agency over their space and over their food supply, which is really wonderful, and then again, sort of creating that greenery that’s helping to reduce the heat island effect.”