Chimborazo Playground Community Garden has 33 raised beds available for nearby families to raise food and flowers for their households; surplus produce is donated to local organizations to help feed other families throughout the city. Additionally, the nonprofit Blue Sky recently began a program that brings children and young adults who don’t otherwise have access to arable green space to the garden to tend a collective plot.

Visitors to the garden, with its abundance of vegetables and flowers, enjoy wandering through the maze of plots, and the park is often the temporary home to all manner of insects, reptiles, and small mammals. A pollinator garden and native bee box at the front of the park help sustain local populations of beneficial insects, and several fruit trees, gifts from Courtney Mailley, the founder of Blue Bee Cider, round out the plantings. The garden is also now a drop-off site for the City of Richmond’s new community composting program, where residents can compost perishable household refuse.