East Missoula Community Garden Opens for Its First Season!
A photo essay of the grand opening of East Missoula Community Garden
On May 3, 2025, gardeners, funders, neighbors, and staff from Garden City Harvest to officially open the East Missoula Garden for its first season. It was a sunny, warm spring day, one that flooded participants with joy and a bit of an itch to start digging in the dirt.
Below is a photo essay, with photos by Gabby Friedlander and words by Genevieve Jessop Marsh.
It all started with Erika Hickey, East Missoula resident and leader in the community group East Missoula United, bringing the idea to our Community Gardens team. The first meeting was outside, spread 6 feet apart, on a corner of an East Missoula park in 2021. East Missoula, she said, was a place where things often happened “to” the community, not “for” the community. As the community gathered to officially open the garden, Erika looked back, and celebrated the fact that this was a vision brought by the community, for the community.
Jean Zosel, Garden City Harvest’s Executive Director, shared some stories from the process of creating the garden — including unearthing that it was considered an urban food desert — the closest grocery store is the Albertson’s in Missoula.
While Jean and Community Gardens Director, Emily Kern Swaffar, held the ribbon, Erika cut it — officially opening the garden for planting!
Emily and our Community Gardens staff toured gardeners around the garden. The gardeners learned the ropes of watering, tools, locks, volunteer hours, and expectations for garden upkeep. Emily drove the construction of this garden from start to finish, starting with listening to the community, working hard to find funding, managing partners, and actually installing the garden. Other major players included Ethan Smith, our Operations Director, and Community Gardens staff.
Each gardener gets a number as they arrive, to reserve their spot in line to pick a plot. First come first served! This used to be how Garden City Harvest conducted Opening Day at all of our gardens each spring. But since Covid/2020, we have switched to video tours and online forms. But we still have the Great Day of Gardening as a way to kick off the season together, at each of the gardens.
Bee homes are fresh and new and ready for our pollinator friends. Garden City Harvest is part of Bee City USA (Missoula is an official Bee City!) and we have pollinator homes installed and maintained at all of our 12 community gardens. Here’s the freshest!
Gardeners tall and small explore their new digs! The garden has several raised beds and crushed granite pathways. The crushed granite is very even and hard, while still being permeable (great for the soil and insects living below). The crushed granite is also great for feet that have a harder time balancing and scooting across in a wheelchair or knee scooter.
Digging into a plot for the first time. Many gardeners stuck around on the beautiful day to prep their beds and start planting. Late May is not too late to start a garden in Montana!
We brought lots of starts from our Neighborhood Farm’s greenhouses to share with the new gardeners. We always plant extra to buffer against things like low seed germination rates or…mice!
And finally, the team that got this garden built and opened: Buck Henderson, Emily Kern Swaffar, and Tara Santi. This dream team (along with Ethan Smith) built beds with lumber donated by Lowe’s, pounded crushed granite, helped build a shed (with the help of Habitat for Humanity), coordinated and lead many, many volunteer workdays, and so much more!
There are 45 plots at the East Missoula Garden — if you would like to garden here, head on over to our Community Gardens page and fill out an application! We would love to have you!