The day before East Missoula’s community garden was set to open, workers with nonprofit Garden City Harvest hosed down pollinator-friendly plants and fixed the last few signs into place. Raised beds and more than 40 plots of tilled earth were ready for planting.
86-year-old Jack Ballas was there. He remembers when Garden City Harvest first polled the community on the idea of establishing a garden about five years ago.
“As far as I know, from what I’ve heard, everybody that they talked to was 100% behind it, so, ‘Let’s go!’” Ballas said.
Ballas and the nonprofit hope the garden will be an oasis in what the U.S. Department of Agriculture considers an urban “food desert.” East Missoula’s closest grocery store is an Albertsons two miles down the highway. That makes it difficult for people with low mobility or a tight budget to access nutritious food.
Each plot in the garden can produce hundreds of pounds of produce during the growing season. Community gardens director Emily Kern Swaffar says that kind of abundance helps more than just the neighborhood.
“Inevitably, people end up sharing with each other or donating extra to the food bank,” Kern Swaffar said. “I think people will maybe be more interested in that knowing that there’s even more need for it right now.”
Kern Swaffar says the nonprofit’s farms donated 20,000 pounds of produce to the Missoula Food Bank and Community Center last year. Food bank development director Jessy Lee says the recent loss of a federal grant will make donations like that all the more critical for meeting increasing demand.
“All families like different things, and it supplements our produce department in a way that we can’t do on our own,” Lee said.
Garden City Harvest says more than half the plots in the new East Missoula garden are booked so far. They’re encouraging all gardeners to “grow a row” for food banks this year.
