The Garden Kitchen VIP Team's mission is to design and implement a climate smart community garden at The Garden Kitchen facility, with consideration for maintaining ADA compliance, differing abilities and needs throughout the lifecycle, and methods that could be implemented by lower resourced populations. The Garden Kitchen is a place in South Tucson, connected to the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, that offers whole health seed-to-table education in the areas of gardening, cooking, nutrition, and physical activity. We work with community members as well as organizations and governments to deliver programming throughout Pima County.

As a whole health program, our aim is to increase health equity for residents of Pima County, recognizing that wellness includes mind, body, and spirit. We do this through working to increase families’ food security, increasing the availability of fresh foods where people live, work, and play, supporting opportunities for free physical activity, and facilitating opportunities for connection through mindfulness practices, community engagement, and storytelling activities. We recognize the wealth of cultural and ancestral knowledge already embedded in local communities and we love it when people share tips, tricks, and memories of their own gardens and kitchens with us and their neighbors. Learn more about the wider mission of The Garden Kitchen.