DUG Sells Community Garden to Pay Off Debt

Just this week, community members and gardeners were told that the community garden they enjoyed would be sold off to private owners in less than 30 days. The El Oasis Community Garden located in the lower Highlands Denver neighborhood is being sold off by Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) in order to pay off a massive sum of debt accumulated.

To add insult to injury, DUG gave gardeners less than 30 days’ notice of the impending sale. One such community member posted on social media saying: “Myself and the other gardeners are devastated that this land is being sold off just because of DUG’s poor management and that we have no time to even attempt to stall the sale and save the garden.”

In addition to being an important area for the community, the space also serves as a major donator to the Bienvenidos Food Bank which has been providing Denver with food for the better part of 40 years. The land itself was donated to DUG back in 1989 and was unmistakably intended to be used as a public community garden. The sale of the El Oasis  violates this original intention.

DUG was established in 1985, in order to support Denver residents in creating sustainable, food-producing neighborhood community gardens. By 1993, DUG was the sole organization responsible for coordinating 21 active gardens, and by 1997, 32 new gardens and DeLaney Community Farm were established.

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According to sources, DUG is using the sale of this community garden to help pay off a whopping $600,000 of credit, for which a separate urban garden located at Pecos St. is listed as collateral.

We reached out to DUG regarding the matter, and they issued the following statement:

“The agreement we have in place will allow us to keep one-third of the land for the reconfigured El Oasis Community Garden while ensuring the sustainability of more than 120 community gardens and 70 school gardens throughout the Denver Metro Area. We understand that some of the El Oasis gardeners are angry about the change, and we are sorry for that. While we’re extremely sad to be in the position to have to sell a portion of the land on which El Oasis Community Garden sits, we take solace in the fact that the land is generating long-term sustainability for DUG and our community of gardeners.”