Wheat Ridge Parks and Recreation and the Jefferson Conservation District’s
Regenerate Wheat Ridge Program Marks 1-Year Anniversary By Brandon Altenburg, Grant and Special Project Administrator, City of Wheat Ridge
Wheat Ridge Parks and Recreation (WRPR) and the Jefferson Conservation District (JCD) created the “Regenerate Wheat Ridge” program in spring 2021 with generous funding support from the National Association of Conservation District’s (NACD) Urban Agriculture Conservation grant program. Over the past year, the team has put on community Arbor Day and Harvest Festival events, hosted 7 free educational workshops at the city-run Happiness Community Gardens, convened local landowners, food producers, and industry experts to discuss the potential of increasing food production opportunities locally, and created a technical assistance guide detailing the efforts as a roadmap for other communities looking to undertake similar goals. The 2021 Arbor Day event partnered with a local elementary school, and the 2022 version will partner with a
Workshop participants 12 • Colorado Byline | Spring 2022
different elementary school and include a volunteer tree planting event along 38th Avenue, Wheat Ridge’s Main Street, with the support of tree donations from the Colorado Tree Coalition. The Harvest Festival was a standalone event in 2021 with educational booths, pumpkin painting, live music, food trucks, and more. The 2022 Harvest Festival will be part of a National Public Lands Day event hosted by Wheat Ridge and Jefferson County Open Space. Free educational workshops consistently saw 25-30 attendees and focused on different regenerative agriculture topics such as soil health, pollinators, utilizing goats, sustainable ecosystems, planning gardens, and a “Kiss the Ground” screening and discussion. These were a big hit with attendees and resulted in pre-registration requirements for 2022 to keep the workshop size manageable. Wheat Ridge resident Karen Berry, an
active participant in the program, said “Regenerate Wheat Ridge is a unique project that connects people with the soil and the source of their food as well as with each other.” The goal of the landowner-producer partnership component of this program is to increase regenerative urban agricultural production in Wheat Ridge by identifying eligible parcels of land and providing technical assistance to the resulting partnerships. The technical guide will serve as one resource for partnership participants, the Jefferson Conservation District has significant resources and experience with supporting landowners with
