Newsroom

Our ever-popular annual Tomato Sandwich Party takes place Saturday, September 6! Join us to celebrate harvest season with a fresh tomato sandwich on us. This free event is our way of thanking you all for being part of our growing community. Whether you've taken one of our workshops, volunteered at our City Farm, have a plot at one of our 19 community gardens, or simply enjoy strolling through our Campus teaching gardens, we'd love to celebrate with you.

Head to Wasatch Community Gardens' Campus (629 E 800 S, SLC) on Saturday, September 6, from 11 am - 2 pm, for...

• Tasty tomatoes from local growers;
• Artisan bread (gluten-free options available) from Leavity Bread & Coffee;
• Pesto made with local basil and garlic;
• Live music;
• Self-guided garden tours with gardening advice from our experts, and;
• Garden-themed activities for the whole family!

Parking will be available along 800 South and surrounding areas. Please do not park on Green Street (directly east of Campus). We of course encourage you to walk or bike if you can! Bike racks are available along 800 South.

Please visit our Accessibility Page to learn more about the accessibility features of Wasatch Community Gardens' Campus and to request an accommodation.

We hope you'll join us for a festive afternoon of good company and ripe, juicy tomatoes!

Volunteer at the Tomato Sandwich Party!

Whether you’re slicing and dicing beautiful tomatoes, assembling sandwich masterpieces, making beverages, or helping direct folks around the gardens, there are plenty of ways to get involved.⁠⁠ It’ll be a day full of food, fun, music, and community spirit and we hope you'll join our tomato team!

Become a Tomato Sandwich Party Volunteer

Thank you to our Tomato Sandwich Party sponsors:

Wasatch Community Gardens and Utah Open Lands Join Forces To Sustain A Community Resource For Increased Local Food Security

Salt Lake City, UT (February 6, 2024) - Uniting to preserve a community resource supporting increased local food security, Utah Open Lands and Wasatch Community Gardens announce the forever protection of an urban agricultural landscape through a conservation easement in west Salt Lake City.  The groundbreaking project is the result of a unique and longstanding partnership between Utah Open Lands and Wasatch Community Gardens that ensures the future of one of Salt Lake City’s flourishing agrihoods.  In total, approximately 2 acres of valuable regenerative agricultural practices and soil is now safeguarded from the threat of concrete.  The existing structures and central new ‘barn’ will serve as Wasatch Community Gardens' new Farm Hub.

“What Wasatch Community Gardens does for the community is as impressive as what they do for regenerative agriculture,” emphasizes Wendy Fisher, Executive Director of Utah Open Lands.  “Our two organizations share core values surrounding agriculture and increased food resiliency in our communities” continued Fisher.  Food grown at the farm is easily accessible and distributed for free through social service partners and designated free pick areas, as the land is just off a regional trail network.

Dwindling contiguous green space underscores the reality of the anticipated loss of resources necessary to serve community needs.  The value of preserving productive green space during this period of robust development in the Salt Lake Valley is more urgent now than ever.  The new farm location allows Wasatch Community Gardens to deepen its impact to ensure greater food security for members of the community who have been pushed to the margins and for those who are disproportionately affected by limited or no access to fresh healthy food.  The farm also plays a role in expanding the capacity to support farmers and agriculture across Utah through creating sharable models that can be referenced and replicated across the state.

“Utah Open Lands’ expertise in negotiating and nurturing complex land protection efforts is remarkable, and Wasatch Community Gardens has long relied on them as a partner in our work.” said Georgina Griffith-Yates, Executive Director of Wasatch Community Gardens.  Over the past 35 years, Wasatch Community Gardens has evolved, seeking to serve all in the community with access to healthy food and gardening opportunities.  As the cost of land and fresh food continues to rise in our region, our work has become even more vital as more people struggle to access affordable healthy food for their households.” said Yates.

As Utah Open Lands pursues the protection of tens of thousands of acres of agricultural ranch and farm lands, the role of educating generations about where their food comes from is as important as saving the productive lands that keep them fed.  The organization’s recent protection of the Albert Kohler Farm and dairy land includes the continued commitment of the Kohler family toward educating over 700 school district kids and agricultural extension interns and the new Farm Hub project greatly increases educational access to agricultural know-how for youth. 

The partnership between Utah Open Lands and Wasatch Community Gardens  highlights the commitment both organizations have to sustaining community self-reliance and self-sufficiency.  The Farm Hub project affirms the paramount role of agricultural resilience in securing our communities’ collective well-being and the multiple benefits that come from communities with green space.  In a departure from the conventional narrative that often pushes farming away from communities, the Farm Hub project positions agriculture as the heart of the community.  It fosters intimate connections between people, their food, and the farmers who cultivate it.

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About Wasatch Community Gardens

Wasatch Community Gardens’ (WCG) mission is to empower people to grow and eat healthy, organic, local food. Since 1989, WCG has provided youth and adults in Salt Lake County with access to land and education for growing and eating fresh produce, while building and nurturing community connections through gardening and healthy food. Annually, over 11,000 community members are served by WCG’s programs, gardens, events, and produce donations, and the majority of program participants are from low- and moderate-income households. 

About Utah Open Lands

For over three decades Utah Open Lands has remained committed to permanently protecting Utah's unique quality of life and natural heritage for future generations.  With over 64,000 acres under our Trust, Utah Open Lands is committed to a vision of land protection that lasts forever and sustains the land which nourishes community. It is a vision that recognizes the generosity of landscapes and the foresight to leave land undeveloped, a promise of safeguarding possibilities for the future.

We are thrilled to announce a new, second farm site to be managed by Wasatch Community Gardens (WCG)! This news comes on the heels of our February announcement of our new permanent Glendale Farm Hub in Salt Lake City’s Glendale neighborhood. With TWO new farm sites coming under WCG management this year, we are twice as excited (and then some!) to get to the important work of pursuing healthy food access for all through farm-based programming and local food production as we work to preserve productive green space in our community.

About the New Site 

WCG has secured an up-to-25-year agreement with Salt Lake City to manage a tract of land that incorporates a former community garden, Cannon Greens — plus additional space — totaling one acre. Our Cannon Greens Community Garden was closed in 2019 due to urban contamination, and we have worked with the City to remediate and bring the site back to life by transferring the soil we so carefully built (which we lovingly refer to as our "gold") from our current Green Phoenix Farm to this new site. This second farm, also in Salt Lake City's Glendale neighborhood, is located at 743 West 1300 South, just east of the Sorenson Unity Center.

We are eager to utilize this new site as the interim location for our farm-based Job Training Program for women facing homelessness — the Green Team — as these extraordinary women continue to grow produce for distribution through social service partners to those with limited or no access to fresh, healthy, organic, local food. After one to two years at this site, we will expand our Job Training Program to our recently secured Glendale Permanent Farm Hub, which will be under construction during the interim.

A Farm Built to Move

Our current Green Phoenix Farm was built on a lease-based site, meaning it was constructed from the very beginning as a mobile farm. While it might appear that we are in a game of farm musical chairs, this mobile approach to establishing the Green Phoenix Farm in 2016 prepared us for the future of WCG’s urban farm-based programming. While we do not have the same need for mobile farm infrastructure at our permanent Glendale Farm Hub, our existing mobile infrastructure at the Green Phoenix Farm still has a role to play in our plan and community! The mobile infrastructure and equipment we already own will be used to construct the farm at today’s newly announced site. This is exciting for many reasons, including the reality that mobile farm infrastructure is a necessary consideration for many new farmers, given the low availability of affordable farm land to own.

One of our guiding organizational pillars is creating sharable models, and a nonpermanent city farm site is an opportunity to continue demonstrating a mobile farm by relocating our Green Phoenix Farm infrastructure to our new site. We'll be doing the heavy lifting of moving our current farm infrastructure to the new site – with plenty of volunteer and City help – from June through October! Stay tuned to our FRESH newsletter and social media channels (Instagram and Facebook) for updates about the move and opportunities to volunteer and visit the new farm.

Wasatch Community Gardens is delighted to have been chosen by Salt Lake City's Department of Sustainability as a 2023 Food Equity Microgrant Awardee, along with our partner Artes de México en Utah. Together, our organizations administer the Sabores de Mi Patria and Families as Teacher programs.

Sabores de Mi Patria, or Flavors of My Homeland, is a three-part workshop series that increases participants' understanding and appreciation of the cultural legacy of la milpa and the three sisters (which are both traditional systems of growing corn, beans, and squash) as symbols of indigenous identity.

The Families as Teachers program provides an opportunities for families to meet before each Sabores de Mi Patria workshop to help garden and learn skills with a smaller group, allowing families to connect with one another and share their heritage.

“We get a lot of comments from folks who maybe grew up in Utah, but their families came from another place of culture. They love this workshop because they feel like they’re getting reconnected to the culture their families are from,” explains Wasatch Community Gardens' School and Family Garden Manager Kimberly Yapias.

Many of the families that participate in Sabores de Mi Patria and Families as Teachers identify as indigenous from various different parts of Latin America. Growing la milpa can help them celebrate this rich cultural identity.

Learn more about Salt Lake City's Food Equity Microgrant and recipients here.

Learn more about how the microgrant is supporting Wasatch Community Gardens' and Artes de México en Utah's programming here.