The True Leaf Market Marketing team took a little field trip to Wasatch Community Gardens, a local nonprofit organization that offers access to urban growing spaces, youth school programs, job training, and life skills programs in the Salt Lake City, Utah area. We were led on a lovely tour of their Campus and City Farm, where we saw how 45,000+ plants are grown each year for their annual community plant sale, as well as thousands of plants grown to support community programs that combat food insecurity.

What Is Food Insecurity?

Access to food can become difficult for a number of reasons relating to the cost of living, food access, and transportation barriers. Not all food sources are created equal. While convenience stores and restaurants can create the illusion of food security, fresh, nutritious fruits and vegetables remain largely inaccessible to many urban residents. For marginalized communities who rely largely on public transportation, access can become even more limited.

Wasatch Community Gardens believes that everyone deserves access to nutritious, fresh food. This is why their programs focus on increasing community access to fresh fruits and vegetables by growing them, learning about them, and consuming them.

Wasatch Community Garden Programs

Job Training & Life Skills

A key part of Wasatch Community Gardens' work is their job training and life skills program, where unhoused women and those at risk work part-time, learning transferable job skills. This amazing program does more than just teach, though. It offers these women the opportunity to improve their circumstances by increasing their access to healthy foods, including them in community efforts, and opening doors to greater employment opportunities that support a brighter future.

During our tour, Amber, Wasatch Gardens Farm Manager, taught us about the Japanese term Kaizen, which means “change for the better or continuous improvement.” This is a mantra followed across all Wasatch Community Garden programs. The job training and life skills program is about more than helping people learn skills and get jobs. It is centered on the needs of the people and helping them become the best individuals they can be.

On our tour, we learned about the ways Wasatch Community Gardens turns those words into actions. They have a locker room where the seasonal job training staff can keep a few belongings, including their work clothes, boots, and whatever else they may need to store within their personal locker space. As they work to produce a harvest for community partners, they also get to enjoy the fruits of their labor. While the individuals working in this program may face hurdle after hurdle, being able to work, eat, and gain a sense of community with those who are understanding of their circumstances is a great relief.

Youth Programs

This community garden organization is about more than selling garden plots; it is focused on helping community members thrive as it works to educate and support the community's youth. Wasatch Community Gardens does this by supporting youth education and food programs, such as the Youth Resource Center and Neighborhood House. Neighborhood House, a local youth program, provides fresh food meals to youth in the community every day. These meals are, in part, prepared with freshly harvested produce from the Wasatch Community Gardens’ City Farm. Much of this harvest is also preserved for use throughout the winter months.

Wasatch Community Gardens has proven they are more than a garden; they are part of the glue that makes a real community, where individuals come together to love, support, and elevate one another. Wherever you go in the world, you will find food at the center of celebrations, devastation, and connection. When times get hard, we come together for relief. When accomplishments are made, we feast in joy. In Salt Lake City Utah, you will find Wasatch Community Gardens making an impact in every way they can.

Growing on the City Farm

In addition to garden plots sprinkled throughout the community available for rent, there is a 1-acre off-grid, certified-organic farm that supports the programs mentioned earlier. This farm is where thousands of plants are grown for the spring plant sale, as well as plants grown to maturity for harvesting. It runs on solar power, with generators on those extra-cold nights.

While things were just getting started on our February visit, in just a few weeks, this place will be sprouting with joy as seeds are planted, the greenhouse filled, and the ground covered with food-producing plants to support youth & adult programs, and open community harvesting events. Each harvest will be carefully grown, recorded, processed, stored, used, and donated to community members.

Are you local to the Salt Lake City area? Keep an eye out for the annual plant sale to support this great organization.