Ten years ago, Fresh Food Connect started as a scrappy idea: what if the extra produce growing in backyard gardens across Denver could make its way to people who needed it? One of the people who helped carry that idea forward was Nessa Mogharreban, and today, she's stepped into a new chapter as the Executive Director of Denver Urban Gardens (DUG), one of the organizations where Fresh Food Connect was born.
We sat down with Nessa to talk about where it all started, what she's learned along the way, and what she's most excited about as she steps into this new role.
Where did your connection to food and gardening begin?
"I grew up in southern Illinois. My dad's from Iran, so being able to share that culture through food and gardening meant a lot to me," Nessa said. "We had a mulberry tree in our backyard, and we'd go out with an umbrella turned upside down, shake the tree, and all the mulberries would fall in. We'd eat our faces off with mulberries, I remember just how much joy we got from growing food in our own backyard."
Food and culture were tightly woven together in her house growing up. "My birthday is December 24th, so every Christmas Eve we cooked Persian food, because that's what I wanted," she laughed. "It wasn't until much later in life that I realized not everybody cooks Persian food on Christmas Eve. I thought everyone did, but that was just me, getting to enjoy and share my culture and heritage."
How did you first connect with Denver Urban Gardens?
"When I moved to Denver in 2009, I was really looking for my people and my place in the city, and I found Denver Urban Gardens," she said. "I found the farm out in Aurora and couldn't even believe this was a job, an organization that built community gardens, grew food, and connected with the city. It felt woven into the fabric of Denver and I wanted to be apart of it."
She started out as a volunteer while working on her graduate degree in public health with an emphasis on environmental health. "I remember writing a paper– 'where do you see yourself in five years?', and I wrote, 'I see myself working at Denver Urban Gardens.' Two years later, I started as the construction volunteer coordinator." In that role, she helped build ten to twelve new gardens a year. "I was always out in the field, getting to know the landscape of Denver and working with communities, landowners, and funding partners. I couldn't imagine doing anything more fun."
That's actually where Fresh Food Connect comes in, right?
"Yes, for my capstone in grad school, DUG, Groundwork Denver, and Denver Food Rescue were all working together on one question: how do we connect the fresh produce grown in our community gardens with the people who need it?" Around 2015, the executive directors at the time, Turner, Wendy, and Michael, built an app for exactly that, called Fresh Food Connect.
Nessa was there from the very first pedal stroke. "The first iteration of it was really just me, going out on a bicycle in the 80205 area code. I think I rode to about eight houses a week, picking up fresh produce from backyard gardeners." From there, the program grew, DUG had a cooler to store the food, and the team built partnerships with food banks and schools to get it where it needed to go. "It grew into its own nonprofit, and it's just so cool to see it now, nationwide. I was talking with Denver Food Rescue just yesterday about how much produce Fresh Food Connect still provides for their participants."
What led you back to Denver Urban Gardens full-time?
After finishing her master's in public health, Nessa briefly explored the corporate world, taking a course at CU Boulder in corporate social responsibility. "A classmate told me it's actually really fun to be in the nonprofit space, getting to work with corporate partners funding the work we do in the field, and she was totally right." After what she calls her "unpaid sabbatical", a few months off from DUG, she came back to lead development and fundraising. "I did that for the past four years, and it takes time to build the kind of trustworthy partnerships that let us do good work every day."
What has stuck with you most, across all these different roles?
"I've always looked at our gardens as more than food access," she said. "Yes, it's food that feels and tastes like home for our gardeners, and yes, it's a way to share culture with people. But these spaces are also about resilience, resilience against social isolation. We've lost a lot of ways to connect with each other and with the earth, and I really believe these gardens are places for connection and for healing."
It's a philosophy she keeps coming back to: "How you grow food either helps people and the planet or hurts people and the planet. Our gardens and food forests genuinely help people and the planet." With 200 garden spaces built across Denver and roughly 17,000 gardeners sharing land across the city, she doesn't take it lightly. "I get to drive around the city and think, 'I remember building that pergola. I remember that potluck.' These are such impactful spaces, I can't believe I get to be paid to do this."
She's not shy about the bigger stakes, either. "Community gardens and food forests aren't nice-to-haves, they're a must-have. They're critical infrastructure for cities. Sometimes I think community gardens might just help save democracy. Sharing land is one of the hardest things we ask people to do, and creating spaces where that happens is some of the most important work we do, even if it's hard to put data behind it."
As you settle into this new role, what's the culture you're building at DUG?
"Right now, we're reworking what our culture looks like, thinking about the next three to five years and what it means to reinvest in the gardens we've already built, rather than just continuing to build new ones," she explained. DUG has become one of the largest community garden organizations in the country, and Nessa wants the focus to shift toward activating the spaces they already have. "Every one of our gardens has its own personality, they're each in their own neighborhood. We want to bring more of that into the fold: sharing potlucks, showing up at community events, not just being in the office."
A lot of that comes down to who's on the team now. "Most of our staff are community gardeners themselves, so they understand what it means to be in community and to share land. We just had a listening session about what DUG’S role really is in community building: do we teach people how to connect, or do we just create the spaces for it to happen? I think it's both: being ourselves, showing up, saying hi, sharing food with our neighbors. Walking the walk and talking the talk."
What are you most looking forward to as executive director, and what would you want to tell the wider community?
"It's a new challenge. I've done almost everything in this organization, but I'm still having some growing pains figuring out how to lead it," she admitted with a laugh. "What I keep coming back to is: let's remember to have fun. I pinch myself every day that this is the work I get to do. Yes, there's mundane stuff, but at the end of the day, it's a garden. Let's have fun, let's get dirty, let's work together."
That spirit extends to how she wants her team to operate, too. "We have people who really care about our mission and about doing good in the world, so let's be joyful, let's be silly, it doesn't all have to be serious.”
One of her favorite parts of the job, she added, is the slower work of persuasion. "One of my favorite things is changing people's minds about the impact community gardens can have, talking with developers or city planners and helping them see the powerful impact these spaces have on cities and on people."
Fresh Food Connect grew out of Denver Urban Gardens' community garden network, and the two organizations continue to work closely together today. Thank you to Nessa for taking the time to share her story with us.http://dug.orghttp://dug.org