Golden evening sunlight glows through a spray of water droplets falling on several rows of raised beds. Lorraine Dunn tries not to get soaked as she adjusts one of the tall tripod sprinklers irrigating the 1-acre backyard-turned-community garden in northwest Fort Collins. She catches a whiff of tomato vines on the breeze as she tries to rinse the sticky yellow tomato tar stains off her fingertips. This water from the Poudre River arrived here via an irrigation ditch originally built in 1861.

Irrigation season starts in late May, when there’s enough mountain snowmelt to divert. At 5:15 p.m. about twice a week in the summer, Lorraine or a volunteer takes a quarter-mile walk along the Pleasant Valley and Lake Canal, through neighbors’ gates and past the Poudre High School baseball fields, moving plywood boards to change the flow of water toward Mulberry Community Gardens.

For more than a decade, Mulberry Community Gardens has fostered friendships and built community by providing a space where all are welcome to learn how to grow food by pitching in. The nonprofit’s goal is to eliminate the barriers of expense, knowledge and land for would-be gardeners through a communal approach to growing.

Instead of renting individually managed plots, volunteers share the work of maintaining more than 50 raised beds, a flock of chickens and two goats. There’s no application or fee to join – just show up during volunteer hours. It’s a gathering place and a creative space for all kinds of projects. The unofficial motto is, “I don’t know. Let’s try it!”

At Mulberry, one can find more than 40 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, an obscure melon called “collective farm woman” and purplish-red Chinese beans that grow 3 feet long. But for most regulars, including current board president DeeDee Wright and her husband, Lance, “it’s never been about having fresh vegetables. It’s always been about the people.”

I first found my way there in the summer of 2016, needing a release from the demands and disappointments of work. I missed my backyard in Missouri, where my husband and I had spent most of our free time with an ambitious vegetable garden, chickens and a mulberry tree. I needed to occupy my hands and quiet my mind.

My identity was still so wrapped up in my photojournalism job that I was more comfortable meeting people in that capacity, so I brought my camera and notebook, intending to create a photo story. I never got that story published, but I kept coming back to the garden with my camera.

Over the next year, my burnout at work intensified. I made the heartbreaking decision to leave what was supposed to be my dream job for self-employment. On my last day, I took my leftover garden-themed farewell cake straight to Mulberry Community Gardens.

During most volunteer hours, I would pitch in on the weeding for a little while and then wander around the garden photographing a little bit of everything going on. Lorraine especially appreciated the photos I sent for the email newsletter.

I crouched down for a low angle on the steam rising from the compost while Javier and Lance took turns tossing forkfuls of decomposing kitchen scraps and fall leaves into the second compost bin. In the north beds, I used my widest angle on Jilli instructing 20 volunteers from Colorado State University on preparing beds to plant peppers. I captured Julie and Alicia’s delight feeding armfuls of bindweed to the goats, and DeeDee teaching herself to braid garlic. I made chicken mugshots to help everyone learn their names. I documented the harvesting of vegetables and mulberries being shaken from the garden’s namesake tree.

As the sun set, I photographed the evening’s bounty, styled by Maria for maximum beauty, just before the colorful haul was divvyed up between the volunteers and the leftovers boxed up for the food bank.

This garden exists because of the vision and efforts of Lorraine Dunn, who wasn’t much of a gardener when the vision took hold. She’s freethinking, hardworking and fun-loving.

She thinks of people in terms of dog breeds. “Jeffy, he’s our garden Irish setter. He is absolutely enthusiastic, energetic, wants to do everything,” she said. “Jim is probably a heeler.”

Like the three little dogs Blazer, Bailey and Pesty Underfoot she took in from a carnie in California, every goat and many of the chickens over the years have been rescues.

“What can I say?” she said. “If it eats, I feed it.”

One rescue chicken, an Araucana named Sophia, was picked on so much by the existing flock that Lorraine took her home to live in the house for the winter. Sophia actually died of old age instead of by dog or racoon.

“That’s my dream for all of them,” Lorraine said.

She and her partner, Erich Stroheim, grandson of silent film actor and director Erich von Stroheim, will celebrate 20 years together this year. They met folk dancing at the Empire Grange next to the garden, where they still meet up with their folk dancing group every week.  

When the house next door to the Grange went up for sale, Lorraine immediately started trying to convince Erich to buy it as a rental property. “I was like a chihuahua nipping at his heels until he succumbed,” she said.

He bought it before the neighbor who had always wanted the property even saw the sign. Erich liked the house because it reminded him of the 1950s house where he was raised. And they both liked its proximity to the Grange.

The huge yard and water rights had Erich thinking it would be a great spot for a community garden. The idea took hold for Lorraine when Erich’s neighbor looked at the backyard and said the same. They immediately sat down for two hours and made a list of all the things they would need. The top priority was people with knowhow.

“If we have a bunch of people here, and everyone has a little bit of knowledge, we’re there,” Lorraine said. “We have 100 percent knowledge.” For Lorraine and Erich, the vision was always more about the community than the gardening.

Laughter erupts around picnic tables near the mulberry tree, where everyone is prepping their potluck contributions.

Retired sociology professor Mike Lacy pours a round of mulberry margaritas with the syrup he made from berries picked last week. He turns to Sam and Alicia, “You know, really, we’re a drinking club with a gardening problem.”

“Mike!” Julie laughs as she tosses together a freshly harvested salad. “You always say that.”

Javier checks the hot wings on the grill and adds the pizza boats DeeDee made by adding pizza toppings to hollowed-out zucchinis cut lengthwise. Lorraine unwraps a discounted wedge of brie from King Soopers.

“My hummus is a Woo-hoo, too!” Maria squeals as she sets corn chips and hummus on the picnic table, using the words on the red-and-yellow markdown stickers.

“Woooo-hoooo!” Lorraine replies, raising her hand for a high five.

Maria found the garden after moving to Fort Collins from Chicago where she has deep roots. Riding her bike down Mulberry Street feeling lonely, she noticed an outdated chalkboard sign that said, “Garden party.”

Even though she couldn’t tell beet greens from a tomato plant, she started showing up weekly. At one of her first potlucks, she said to Javier, “This seems like a great group of people.”

He replied with what she needed to hear most: “You belong here.”

Maria was thrilled to join this “collection of social misfits,” as Mike calls it. This eclectic and intergenerational group of people likely never would have met outside the garden.

These Thursday evening potlucks were my favorite time of the week. Sharing food and garden chores, I could escape my own neurosis as a newly self-employed photographer in a saturated market. My efforts at the garden had more predictable outcomes than my efforts in business. The seeds we planted in the spring reliably spouted and eventually gave us vegetables. And that felt real and grounding when my work life felt shaky.

Everything about the garden – being in nature, sunshine, physical work, microbes in the soil, the potlucks, bonfires and music – was good for my soul. It gave me so many things I needed: a group of friends to laugh with every week, people to cook for and talk about food with, a place to host visiting family and friends, and something to photograph just for me.

Javier always encouraged my photography, and he urged me to start an Instagram account for the garden. He wanted to share our community with everyone, and he made friends everywhere he went. People were drawn to him.

When Jilli found the garden, she and Javier became fast friends. It made no difference that he was about 20 years older. They brought people together over food and music every chance they got. Three springs in a row, they drove to the cargo area at Denver International Airport to pick up 60 pounds of live crawfish and poured them into a plastic kiddie pool until the boiling pot was ready. When Jilli turned 30, Javier brought the piñata to her kid-themed birthday party. Javier sometimes brought touring musicians to the garden, covering the fee himself because he told so many people they didn’t need to pay the cover – he just wanted them there. Old friends and former garden volunteers would always come back for these occasions.

By December 2021, the pandemic had changed our acre of Fort Collins along with the rest of the world.  Many of my garden friends had either moved away or into other seasons of life, keeping them from regular volunteer hours. I worked weekends out of town for a while, and I hadn’t been in months.

One Sunday, DeeDee arrived for volunteer hours looking like she was about to throw up. On her drive across town, she had gotten an awful call: Javier had died suddenly and unexpectedly. He had taken his own life. He had hidden his pain. Some who knew him best were shocked, but not surprised.

Telling Lorraine and Mike felt horrible, but it was a small comfort to share the grief with friends. Lorraine started letting people know, and Jilli came over to the garden right away. When Maria called me, my chest tightened, and hot tears flowed immediately. The world – and the garden – would never be the same.

A week before Christmas, Julie flew back from Massachusetts and Sam and Alicia made the drive from Denver to celebrate Javier’s life. We gathered at the garden, and everyone brought a dish inspired by him. We laughed and cried and shared food and memories with Javier’s brother and sister. After nearly 2 years of Covid, it was the best reunion that no one wanted to have to go to.

On a windy day this spring, we came together again to plant new life in honor of Javier – a hot wings maple tree – where he used to grill, between the mulberry tree and the pergola. Javier’s siblings mixed his ashes with the soil and the compost he always turned. We wrote notes on brown paper and fed them to the tree.

I think Javier would love the idea of his tree providing shade for the new cohort of volunteers sharing their talents like tie-dying, mushroom growing and the fluffiest southern biscuits I’ve ever had at elevation.

I came to the garden thinking I would do a quick feature story. I ended up with a long-term documentary photography project and many good friends. The garden will never be like it was in those few years before Covid. This community growing together will keep evolving. And we can always come back.