I want to dispel the the myth that the Ohana Kuleana Community Garden serves a narrow band of community members.

As a teacher at Riverview Elementary School, I have worked with over a thousand students in our school garden, which is situated within the larger community garden. Each year, a new crop of kindergarteners and preschool students exposes nearly 100 new first-timers to the garden. The joy, curiousity, authentic learning, camaraderie, integration with nature, challenges, successes, pride, productivity, intergenerational sharing and learning, laughter, mental health benefits, physical exertion, and academic rigor can be difficult to describe or understand without being there.

You are welcome to participate and get a taste of the magic by coming to the open house 9 a.m.-noon Aug. 21 The garden is located at 30th St and E. 6th Ave.

The garden's future is uncertain and I am deeply concerned that the prospect of development poses an imminent threat to the paradise that more than 1,000 young children and many adults from our community have toiled to scratch out of a barren plot of dirt. For those children to see the rocks that they carried off the hillside to terrace a pollinator garden; a greenhouse that they built together with professional farmers; worms, insects, snakes, and birds that they love; the compost that has taught them lessons in biology, chemistry and ecology; and the elder gardeners that share their edible bounty and warm smiles with the kids vanish, in an instant, under a bulldozer, would break many hearts, including mine.

Charles Love

Durango