Brad Distel (left) and David Morris will begin construction of a new garden at Montrose Field House on Monday March 8, 2021.
The Montrose Recreation District has taken a step forward in establishing a community garden and teaching nutritional benefits and healthy lifestyles.
MRD program coordinators and maintenance managers laid the foundation stone for a new garden on the grounds of the Field House on Monday. It was the initial push for the garden, which will initially function primarily as a “living classroom” with an emphasis on nutrition education, said Jeremy Master, leisure activities manager at MRD, on Monday, serving children in the after-school enrichment programs and in summer.
A US $ 80,000 grant from the National Park and Recreation Association has helped MRD reduce child hunger and community food insecurity.
The grant and focus on nutrition education in the garden will help improve community access to healthy food. Valley Food Partnership and MRD plan to raise awareness of federal food programs and registration campaigns that will provide households across the community with better access to healthy food, the master said. This includes various forms of access and support, e.g. B. SNAP benefits (including education) and vouchers for the Montrose Farmers’ Market.
“It’s about making it more accessible and shared for everyone so that everyone has equal opportunities to have access to healthy eating and nutrition education,” said Nikki Munroe, garden coordinator for the gardens at Montrose Field House.
Other community organizations could join as the project expands. Public relations plans are currently under development, albeit at an early stage. Ultimately, there is hope that the garden can act “intergenerationally” and act as a “vehicle” to provide services to all age groups in the community – education, cooking classes, food preparation. Munroe and Master will work together and work with partners to develop public relations strategies and expand the compass of the garden.
As the garden coordinator, Munroe will spend most of her time developing the garden at the Field House. However, she will also coordinate with the Valley Food Partnership to adopt and learn from best practices that are used in other community gardens in Montrose. “We want everything to be connected,” she said.
Left to right: Miguel Lopez, Liz Gracesun, David Morris, Tyler Morales, Brad Distel, Gabriel Baca, Jeremy Master, Mackenzie Lyons and Nikki Munroe pose for a photo to celebrate the groundbreaking in a new community garden at Montrose Field House.
The funds and resources from the grant will help Tyler Morales, site coordinator for the After School and Summer Enrichment Programs, make programming more sustainable while providing more growth opportunities.
Program Assistant Mackenzie Lyons, who has her own classroom at Field House, says the garden gives the children in the programs an opportunity to translate classroom learning into experimental (hands-on) learning – the children are expected to start digging in the dirt of the garden in the first week of April.
It’s similar to what the kids experienced in 2018 when they planted seeds and later watered them in a garden at Pomona Elementary School. Program coordinators and staff have received positive feedback from the project, Lyons said.
“It’s super exciting to see their faces of pride that they have grown something,” Lyons said of the Pomona Garden before realizing the potential of the new project. “I think you will really love this opportunity now that it is here at the Rec Center.”
The garden is developing as the post-school program bounced back this semester after seeing fewer children than usual last fall. (No specific decision was made, but Morales said he believed financial uncertainty due to the pandemic could have been a factor in the decline in enrollment.)
Lyons hopes to vote with Munroe on the adoption of the NRPA nutritional literacy curriculum, Commit to Health: Food of the Month, for the garden. The curriculum includes a garden area that highlights seasonal ideas for planting and growing.
“It really combines the ‘living classroom’ aspect,” said Lyons. “We can start with seedlings here (in the classroom) and show the kids what it looks like and plant it out there, which is cool to bond the two together. If they can’t necessarily plant something out there, they also have some input. “
That includes promoting healthy habits, Morales said. By establishing these nodes of partnerships, the children can be put on the road to success through education and practical learning. They can grow up knowing how to grow their own foods while making healthy choices, he said. (Morales praised the collaboration with other organizations in the state as MRD offered resources and feedback from its experience.)
In addition to the Valley Food Partnership, MRD has also partnered with the Montrose County School District in the past for the programs, Morales said, and MRD hopes to expand with MCSD’s Nutritional Food Service to provide the community with meals as well Support nutritional education, summer lunches for the children and snacks for the after-school program.
Public feedback is encouraged, Master said, so that the community can offer ideas on how the garden can help someone specifically in certain areas of the city or in the community as a whole. (The master can be reached at jeremy@montroserec.com.)
“We need an open dialogue with everyone who can support this,” he said.
Construction of the garden is expected to be completed by the end of March.
Josue Perez is a contributor to the Montrose Daily Press
