Fresh produce is an essential component of a well-balanced diet but is not always accessible or available for everyone. Grow-A-Row is an excellent opportunity to bridge community, build relationships, and provide our customers with fresh, local produce. Every growing season, we look for gardeners to donate some of their extra garden produce to the food bank.
As a gardener, choosing to Grow-A-Row for the food bank creates community, reduces food waste, and ensures everyone in our community has access to nutritionally dense food, regardless of their circumstances. Drop off your produce during our donation hours. We accept all garden produce. For fruit trees, we only accept fruit from trees that have not been sprayed in the last year.
Produce Preparation and Distribution
Please wash or rinse any excessive dirt from the produce. Please discard any produce or fruit that has excessive damage from pests.
The Learning Garden and Food Forest at Story Mill Community Park were created with input from our community, the Trust for Public Land, the City of Bozeman, and the support of countless partners, donors, volunteers, and community members. The space and partnerships are currently managed by Gallatin Valley Food Bank as another creative approach to improving food security in Southwest Montana.
In an effort to expand this opportunity to more people in our community, we operate on a “community garden” model in which the garden is managed by HRDC staff and volunteers but open to the entire community for harvest. What is not harvested by the community is donated back to the Gallatin Valley Food Bank. . We also partner with diverse organizations and community members who use the Learning Garden for educational programming, therapeutic activities, and wellness opportunities.
Our garden goals are multifaceted in that we want to grow more nutritious food for our customers, provide spaces for therapeutic and educational programming, and decrease stigma of the reality of food insecurity. In doing so we will provide an example of what it looks like to grow your own food in Montana. We hope that in creating these growing spaces, we can facilitate opportunities for our community to deepen their relationship to food.
Our Learning Garden also includes the Food Forest.
The Food Forest is a quarter-acre park that sits adjacent to the Story Mill Learning Garden. It creates a sensory experience for park visitors while educating them about the variety of perennial edibles that grow in this climate. Food forests mimic the architecture of woodland ecosystems and incorporate fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines, and perennial vegetables. The food forest concept is promoted by permaculture practitioners worldwide as a way of increasing food security, decreasing the inputs needed to grow crops, and inspiring more home-scale food production.
The public food forest model is based on an open harvest policy, where any visitor is invited to sample what is in season.
Interested in hosting a food drive? Visit our food drive page to register.
