Weaver Creek Park Community Food Forest

This year marked one of our most vibrant and community-centered seasons yet. Thanks to the incredible support of our volunteers, schools, and local partners, we expanded our educational programs, strengthened sustainable food systems, and deepened community engagement across all our initiatives.

We hosted more than 30 educational workshops and numerous community events that brought people of all ages together to learn, grow, and celebrate. 

When late snows arrived around Easter, we combined our Earth Day and Easter festivities into one joyful gathering that united families and students in hands-on orchard care and environmental learning. Over 100 families joined us to explore the park, craft native flower seed bombs, and create worm bins to educate our community about ecological stewardship.

Throughout the summer, Jovial hosted weekly hands-on workshops focused on soil health, pest management, pruning, and water conservation. We also celebrated a major infrastructure milestone: the full rebuild of our vineyard using the Geneva Double Curtain system. This investment paid off with an incredible 800-pound grape harvest, our largest to date! Community spirit flourished through events like our Plant Sale, Ice Cream Social, wildlife and pollinator programs, and family movie nights all designed to create an inclusive space for connection, learning, and joy.

We piloted a new type of community event in the orchard this year: Movie Nights Under the Stars! Our events brought together over 200 community members for an evening of fun and connection. With the help of volunteers and the Jovial team, we transformed the orchard into an outdoor theater. Partnering with Kendallvue Elementary School, which hosted concessions as a fundraiser, we enjoyed a beautiful, calm evening under mild skies. It was a heartwarming reminder of how simple shared moments can strengthen the roots of our community.

The year concluded with a series of fall workshops and celebrations that reflected the power of collective stewardship. Our Fall Festival welcomed more than 1,700 attendees, featuring local live music, refreshments, hayrides, and family activities. Volunteers and Master Gardeners led engaging sessions on seed saving, orchard pruning, and preparing the garden for winter, ensuring that our shared spaces continue to thrive for seasons to come while building community and connection.

Looking ahead, we are eager to build on this momentum by expanding youth programming, advancing orchard restoration, and increasing our capacity to distribute fresh food to families in need. With continued community and your support, Jovial Gardens and Orchard will keep cultivating knowledge, sustainability, and resilience across our region.

None of this would be possible without your continued support.
With gratitude, the Jovial team

This summer, Jovial Concepts has been buzzing with activity!

Our garden programs blossomed with renewed energy, inclusion, and community support. From joyful youth gardening sessions to hands-on school workshops and the construction of a new educational garden, our community came together to cultivate growth in every sense. With the help of dedicated volunteers, we also began revitalizing a vineyard using the Geneva Double Curtain training system, setting the stage for a more sustainable and productive future.

Gardening with Individuals with Developmental Disabilities.

We have enhanced our programming and have been gardening with care. For example, our Radical Radishes and Crazy Carrots workshops invited gardeners into an immersive, joyful experience that combined sensory exploration, food education, and hands-on gardening. Each session began with an energizing community circle complete with movement, stretching, and laughter to build connection and set a welcoming tone. Gardeners then explored whole vegetables using sight, touch, smell, and even sound, snapping fresh carrots and gently handling radishes to understand their unique characteristics. Tastings followed, featuring flavorful radish salad and carrot snacks, helping participants appreciate how these root vegetables can be enjoyed both raw and prepared. In the learning segments, we compared tiny seeds to their full-grown forms, discussed the essentials of plant growth like sun, soil, and water, and used visual aids to illustrate just how much water a single carrot needs. Participants were deeply engaged as they sowed seeds across designated beds, many offering kind words or blessings to the soil. These workshops not only strengthened gardening knowledge but also highlighted food justice by emphasizing that the produce grown would be donated to local families in need. 

Spring Garden Clubs: Growing with Joy

Our garden club with one school has welcomed over 45 students and family members to help tend thriving beds. While the youngest enjoyed a story stroll, others planted, watered, and learned essential techniques like spacing seeds, measuring planting depth, and repotting seedlings with care. These lessons were as much about cultivating confidence as they were about cultivating crops. Another workshop welcomed two amazing visits from our entomologist friend Karim from CSU. The kids explored real insect collections, gently petted hissing beetles, observed a tarantula, tried seasoned crickets (yes, really!), and learned about wasp nests, bug jobs, and more. We even went on a mini insect hunt and played nature-themed games.

As an integral part of our workshops, we incorporate hands-on cooking acitivities. This summer, in one workshop, we made a garden-fresh watermelon salad! The kids took charge chopping watermelon and cucumbers, tearing basil and mint, slicing shallots, zesting and juicing limes, and finishing it all off with a splash of olive oil. It was colorful, simple, and a huge hit - such a fun and tasty way to celebrate the season together!

And recently, this past weekend and current week, we have been working through the heat of summer to renovate and build new gardens at a local elementary school!

Community Gardening at Weaver Creek Park

Every Saturday at 10am, we host free gardening workshops open to the entire community, offering hands-on learning and practical skills for gardeners of all levels. Our sessions have explored a range of topics, from a soil amendments class filled with questions and discussion to a demonstration on planting Southern soul food crops and installing drip irrigation in the butterfly garden. One especially memorable morning ended with youth releasing monarch butterflies into the orchard. Other workshops focused on vegetable pruning and strategies for supporting stunted plants, while later sessions delved into weed identification and Integrated Pest Management (IPM). With the help of volunteers we tackled thistle in the orchard, cleared overgrown beds, enriched the soil, organized our seed library, and began preparing a new garden area for future milkweed planting.

We continue to support a series of backyard gardens where we educate families about gardening, and a portion of produce grown from these gardens is always donated to local food banks.

Gratitude Grows Here

Across all programs, our gardens flourished not just with plants but with laughter, learning, and community connection. Whether it was watching a beetle hiss, planting strawberries and potatoes, or labeling a seed library with a grandparent volunteer, these moments cultivated joy and discovery.

As always, none of this would be possible without your support. You are the roots of this work, and your investment allows us to nourish both the land and the learners who tend it. Thank you for helping us grow a more connected, sustainable, and joyful community.

With endless gratitude,
The Jovial Concepts Team