It’s the Great Pumpkin (Park): Henderson gets community garden

Pumpkin Park, on Drake Street near Burkholder Boulevard, marks Henderson’s 71st park, but this one has something no other Henderson park has — the city’s first public community garden.

Pumpkin Park features two gardens: One is fully open to the public, and anyone from the community can freely pick the fruits and vegetables growing there. The other is private, and people can rent out a plot of their own for a year.

Garden Farms of Nevada plants and maintains the fruits and vegetables at the public park, and the organization offers support, such as answering questions and providing a planting list, to the private garden renters.

Allie Pieroni, assistant manager of Garden Farms of Nevada, said the organization teaches people in urban settings how to grow food. It follows that goal through farmers’ markets, classes and helping to set up community gardens, among other services.

The gardens at Pumpkin Park mark one of the larger-scale projects that Garden Farms of Nevada has taken on.

“We typically do a lot more smaller-scale things like we do backyard gardens or school gardens, or we do have another community garden in North Las Vegas, but it’s nothing compared to this size,” Pieroni said about Pumpkin Park.

Mayor Michelle Romero said there are some private community gardens in the city, at some schools and within some neighborhoods, but the new park is the first to be open to the public.

Pumpkin Park is located in one of Henderson’s food deserts, and will serve as a resource for the nearby community to have better access to fresh food, Romero and Pieroni said.

“This is actually gonna bring food access to people who are necessarily not going to be able to have access to fresh food,” Pieroni said. “Like you can’t get that anywhere else, fresh food straight from the earth. You definitely can’t get that in a grocery store.”

All of the private slots are currently taken at Pumpkin Park, but residents can visit Henderson’s website to get onto a wait list for when slots open up.

Contact Mark Credico at mcredico @reviewjournal.com. Follow him on Instagram @writermark2.