Private Regional Group: Mountain West

Mabuhay! I am Juvy Mojares, Gardening Club Coordinator at Somerton Middle School in Somerton, Arizona. Now in our third year, our club supports 15 passionate 7th-8th grade student gardeners. While our work currently centers on indoor hydroponics in the science lab, we are actively building momentum toward our vision: constructing the outdoor SMS Learning Garden. To make this vision a reality, we are partnering with key community stakeholders, including Yuma County Public Health, to design and fund a sustainable, hands-on space for experiential learning.

Hey all! 

My name is Chelsea, and I'm the Program & Operations Manager at Sun Valley Kitchen + Community Center in Denver, CO. We are in the final planning phases of our Urban Garden, partnering with the City & County of Denver Parks & Rec. We will be operating youth programming through Rude Rec Center, who we'll be located right behind. 

I've worked in the world of youth development for some time, and have always wanted to fuse my passion for growing food with that work. For now, the closest I get to this is by overseeing our Kids Cooking Class for elementary school students. 

While we do have an Urban Farm Manager, I'm thrilled to partner with him to make our programming empowering, exciting, grounding and engaging for our neighborhood's youth. My first job at 14 was working at an urban garden through a youth employment program. Now I feel I'm finally coming full-circle! Through my professional career from restaurants to finally moving to food access, I feel a closeness to the power of food to strengthen community and connection, well-being and again, empowerment. We will be hiring youth and adult employees from the neighborhood to steward the space in a multigenerational effort in community building, one of the core pillars of our organization. 

I'm a self-taught gardener, photographer, reader and explorer that feeds off of human interaction and solitude alike. Outside of work I'll get cozy with my cats, go on road trips, read books, go to shows, go digging for treasures in thrift and antique stores; and bike on gravel roads in pretty places. Often I'll also kick back and lay around trying to eat good food. 

Looking forward to connecting with you all! 

Hello team,

My name is Brandy Cruz and I was a former bilingual Program Specialist with SustainEd Farms fighting food justice, while teaching about gardening and nutrition. This year I was grateful enough to become the new Farm Educator Coordinator at Denver Green School Northfield teaching the garden elective where we are working on improving our new Silvopasture with our goats and chickens. I am so grateful to be a part of this journey for fighting food justice has truly changed my life and I want to continue to inspire other minority groups. 

Im a huge concert/music girly or most live entertainment , spending time outdoors whether it is hiking, talking my husky dog on a cold snowy hike, or hanging by the creek on my hammock.

Truly excited to learn and connect with others for I believe networking is worth making impact!

Brandy C

Hi all!

My name is Brooke, and I'm the Community/School Garden Manager for the SOIL Outdoor Learning Lab. We are located in Durango, Colorado, in the southwest part of the state near the Four Corners. We are a Durango School District program offering field trip and project based learning opportunities for the 13 schools in the district at our one big garden site. We partner with Parks and Rec to run a 53-bed community garden and adult workshops. We also have a 1,200 square foot grow dome greenhouse, which has allowed us to expand field trip programming through the winter. We were recently awarded a state DOLA Community Schoolyards grant which will allow us to build out the next two phases of our project. We (two staff plus one AmeriCorps member) are super excited and super overwhelmed!

My background is in both garden education and food security work, with experience as an educator at Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Grow Portland and as Partnerships Manager for Northern New Mexico's regional food bank based in Santa Fe. Outside of work, I spend a lot of time with my amazing almost-three-year-old daughter and my husband, who is a Durango native, exploring (hiking, camping, sitting around in) our local mountains and enjoying our sweet town. I also love a good book, embroidery projects, and getting down to see friends in New Mexico. Nice to meet you all!

Hello!  My name is Stephanie Holmes.  I currently live in Salt Lake but will be moving back to Ft. Collins in a year when I retire from my current job as a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon here.  I have recently taken the Cornell online Garden-Based Learning class (although I didn't get a certificate due to time constraints I learned a TON in that amazing class) and am working on my Master Gardener certificate through CSU.  I have been a home vegetable gardener for >25 years and love to cook and preserve my harvest haul every year.  Due to my job, I interact with kids of all different ages all day long and love them, and I am really looking forward to spending time helping kids learn to garden and cook what they grow when I get back to CO, so I joined this community to see what is happening in the Front Range area and make some connections!  Hoping to see where I can roll up my sleeves and help and what work needs to be done in Northern CO!  

Hello fellow garden and food security folks! 

I'm Jackie, originally from the Austin non-profit and local government scene where I got my start in outdoor education and school gardens. I'm newly transplanted here to Denver, CO for work and play! I am the farm manager at a Montessori school here in Denver in the Virginia Village neighborhood where I'm managing farm lesson K-8th, outdoor raised beds, campus composting, indoor tower gardens, and a hydroponics grow op in an upcycled shipping container on our campus. I resonate with many of the issues you all work in and are passionate about, especially as they relate to sustainability and food insecurity in our shared region.

I'm looking forward to learning alongside you all and connecting more soon. 

Hi! I'm Abbey Palte and I teach second grade at a STEM magnet school in Northglenn, CO. I am in charge of our school/community garden and I run an Earth Club. I have a compost pail in my classroom where students put their leftover fruit from breakfast which is nice because we are "forced" to visit the garden at least once a week to dump our compost in the bin out there. I also try to bring lessons out to the garden as often as I can. I find science, writing, and SEL (social emotional learning) easiest to bring to the garden but I know there are ways to use the garden to get to all of the subjects. We have 6 raised beds in the garden and I am fortunate to have a parent volunteer who is currently working on her Master Gardener certificate from CSU and she is passionate about heirloom and rare seeds so we have some very interesting produce this year! My students have been munching on pink fang tomatoes and patty pan squash, as well as an abundance of cherry tomatoes (yellow, red, and purple!) and zucchini. We haven't picked any of our jelly melons yet, but we've harvested a few pumpkins that are currently serving as fall decor in my classroom. 
Magic happens when we bring kids outside to learn and I feel so fortunate to be at a school where it's possible!

I'm excited to connect with all of you!

As Zach Galifianakis says on This is a Gardening Show, "the future is agrarian!"