Weaver Creek Park Community Food Forest

Summer is in full swing here at Weaver Creek Park, and our gardens are absolutely bursting with life! Thanks to your support, our dedicated team and a vibrant community of volunteers, we are cultivating one of our most active, inclusive, and sustainable seasons yet!

During this drought, we are more focused than ever on saving every drop of water that we can. We have finished a full orchard audit and repairs of our drip irrigation systems, and we are happy to report that every single tree, grape vine, and plant in the labyrinth is outfitted with individual drip emitters and that our raised bed gardens and butterfly garden are running properly on full drip systems as well. Next year, our hope is to make our raised bed gardens even more efficient by transitioning all gardens away from soaker hoses and to a more robust dripline. From pruning earlier this spring and trellises built both last year and this year, the grapes at the orchard are looking better than ever!

Our youth initiatives are thriving under the warm summer skies! We will soon be wrapping up our first of two sessions of Sun Sprouts, a hands-on youth summer camp program running during the weeks of July where young learners are discovering the wonders of gardening. Our teen youth volunteer initiative which we call "Touch Grass" has seen wonderful participation from local teens dedicating their summer to supporting the park. A massive shoutout goes to our volunteers, some of whom have already volunteered for 40 hours this month! Under beautiful, mild summer skies, we are hosting permitted summer movie nights at Weaver Creek Park starting at 7pm on the Second Friday of each month! Come catch us for the next one! It's a fun time with face painting, some fundraising for a local school, popcorn, and a unique drive-in-movie like vibe as the sun sets against the mountains at showtime.

This year, we have partnered with the local nonprofit Spirit of the Sun to plant a maze full of medicinal native plants. It is a beautiful space and planting is likely to continue into 2027 as each plant is ethically sourced and mindfully planted. With the beautiful space at Weaver Creek Park, we are focused on nurturing the land and improving biodiversity. Later this summer, we will be hosting our first ever BioBlitz at the park to catalogue plants, insects, and animals with volunteers.

Our Garden Ability program, formerly known as our I/DD program, is in full swing with a packed schedule and full roster of individuals learning about gardening and healthy foods. Each program offers an art related craft, a healthy food recipe and food preparation component, and of course a good dose of hands-in-the-dirt gardening! They even took on building benches for the park; it was a major success!

Later this year, we will continue building up a berry patch full of Blackberries, Raspberries, Goji Berries, and more! This year we were fortunate to harvest Black, Gold, and Red Raspberries from the backyard of a local community member which were the first plants to go into the berry patch! We also have plans to add a walking path which spells out the word PEACE in the berry patch, and we are looking to add an additional shed to our office backyard which borders the park. The shed will be used to hold program materials for Garden Ability, Sun Sprouts, and other youth programming.

If you are interested in joining us for any of the events mentioned or would like to learn more about gardening in Colorado, please check out our new volunteer platform and consider signing up to join us! https://www.volgistics.com/appform/1996763259

Weaver Creek Park is a very special place and none of what we do would be possible without your support. We are grateful for you and wish you well,
- The Jovial Concepts Team.