This is a transcript of the Spur of the Moment episode “Community through gardening with Linda Appel Lipsius.” It is provided as a courtesy and may contain errors.

Linda Appel Lipsius: Up until the sixties, every American grew their own food. It was what you did, it was what every culture outside of America grows their own food.

Jocelyn Hittle: Hello and welcome to CSU Spur of the Moment, the podcast of Colorado State University’s Spur Campus in Denver, Colorado.

Linda Appel Lipsius: I describe this as just, it’s fundamental, it’s elemental, like we are supposed to be digging in the soil. We are supposed to be connected to the earth. We are supposed to grow our food.

Jocelyn Hittle: On this podcast, we talk with experts in food, water, health and sustainability and learn about their current work and their career journeys. Today I’m joined by Linda Appel Lipsius, the Executive Director of Denver Urban Gardens, and co-founder and board member of Teatulia, which sells sustainably raised organic hot teas, iced teas, and tea sodas throughout the US. We will talk more about Linda’s journey, but I’ll also note that she has been a VP for Orange Glow International and an account manager for Young and Rubicam. Linda lives here in Denver with her husband and two children. Welcome, Linda.

Linda Appel Lipsius: Thank you, Jocelyn. Happy to be here.

Jocelyn Hittle: So let’s start with Denver Urban Gardens. Can you tell us a little about the organization and what does it do?

Linda Appel Lipsius: Absolutely. So Denver Urban Gardens, otherwise known as DUG for short, is a community garden organization, and we have been around for 43 years and we have 192 community gardens across six counties in metro Denver. We’re actually the largest independent community garden organization in the country. I say all this, I can’t take credit for it, I’ve only been there two years. But these are the stats behind the organization and we support about 40,000 people with our garden program, our food access programming, and then our education and skill building.

Jocelyn Hittle: Wow, that’s incredible. It’s a very large organization. You said you’re the biggest, do you know who’s right behind you? How do you compare?

Linda Appel Lipsius: Well, I say we’re the largest independent community garden organization in the country. So New York City, their organization has 500 gardens, but it’s part of the parks department. So we’re an independent non-profit. A lot of people actually think we are part of Denver Parks or the city of Denver. But no, so we’re independent and I think pretty significantly larger than the other independent non-profits, for sure.

Jocelyn Hittle: Well, that’s incredible. Can you tell us an example of one of these gardens? Obviously you can’t tell us about all of them, but maybe you can tell us about a few of them. What are some of your favorites, how do they operate, for someone who’s not familiar with an urban garden program.

Linda Appel Lipsius: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And community gardening is sort of a funny thing. I feel like everyone’s kind of heard of it, but nobody really actually knows what it is, unless you are a gardener, a community garden. So the way that these gardens work, they started in the sixties and seventies and it got started in Detroit and Philly and New York, and it was for urban city apartment dwellers who didn’t have a place to grow their own food, and so they would take these vacant lots and they would, over time, turn them into gardens and farms. And so that’s kind of the origin of it.

And when they started popping up in Denver in the seventies, same thing. It was the original gardens are up in Highlands and it was people who didn’t have their own land who wanted to grow food, and also wanted to come together in community. And the way it works is we have 192 gardens, but we don’t own the land. We do own seven parcels, but we partner with landowners. And those landowners are typically parks departments, cities, school districts, housing authorities, senior centers, and we work with them. We have a lease or a land use agreement where we care for this parcel or this part of the land that has been designated community garden.

So these gardens have individual plots and our gardens are anywhere from five to 150 plots. So all over the show in terms of how big they are. People rent individual plots for the growing season. And Denver, of course, it’s a tiny six-month growing season and they pay average of $45 to use the plot. And then there’s a sort of $25 DUG dues that goes with it. They can grow anything they want for their own family consumption or their own personal consumption, and then we ask that 10% of it is donated either to a local food bank or a basket outside the garden, or sometimes people just have donation plots where they welcome the community in.

I think the bigger sort of picture and impact of these gardens is, yes, it’s a great place for people to grow food, but what I’ve been really focusing on since I’ve been there is the other stuff, is the sort of broader impact of these gardens. And they are really unique ways for people to come together in community. We’ve kind of lost so much of that, especially with COVID, especially with devices. So it’s a great way for people to come together, to build something together. Climate action, you can actually really have a lot of positive collective climate action, great skill building, mental and physical health and wellbeing, food access, and then we also are really ancestral food ways. It’s a really neat way for people to grow food that they grew up with or meaningful to their culture. So there’s so much going on.

Jocelyn Hittle: That sounds wonderful. Can you speak a little bit more about some of the community building? Are there events, does it happen incidentally as people are out working in their plots? Is it a mix? What happens there?

Linda Appel Lipsius: So what DUG does, yes, we build gardens. That’s actually the easy part. Our sort of secret sauce is what we call the human infrastructure, and that includes both garden leadership, because these gardens survive because there is someone who has ownership over it, not real ownership, but there’s leadership in place and the community piece is critical. So yes, you have your own plot, but you also have to do volunteer hours to maintain the common areas and the pathways and mulch and the compost bins and things like that. So there’s sort of these group efforts.

We really hope that the gardens have potlucks and do events, and then we, from DUG HQ, have been doing what we call micro network events. So we’ve been going into the gardens doing learning labs, doing compost, doing educational things. So it’s totally different. And the beauty of these gardens, too, as well, the model is similar, every single garden totally reflects its community in every single way, in how they do the plots and what they’re growing. So there’s a lot of expression. It’s pretty cool.

Jocelyn Hittle: Do you have a few favorites? What are the ones that have the most different expression, as you put it, from maybe the more typical urban garden?

Linda Appel Lipsius: The contrast in the extremes to me are really interesting. So there’s a couple that I always call out. So one is the West Wash Park Community Garden, and it’s right across from the Arts Students league. Apparently it predates DUG, it’s been there forever. It’s in Wash Park, it’s lovely, it is resourced, there’s pergolas, there’s contemplative spaces. I mean it is just everything. It’s got a custom iron gate around it. It’s beautiful. And all of the colorful tomato cages that you get at Home Depot or wherever. So that’s one example.

Then you go into Aurora where we’ve got one of my favorites, which is Bealer Garden in Aurora, and the population there is primarily Nepalese refugees. And this garden is stunning. So instead of your fancy metal and plastic Home Depot tomato cages, there are crypts, there are bed frames, there are tree branches that are used as supports for beans and tomatoes. And it is this beautiful, stunningly beautiful it looks, and without being disrespectful, it looks like a mess, but it’s not. Is so elegant and it is so glorious. And so those two are totally different. Those are two of my favorites.

Jocelyn Hittle: I love that. I love a kind of hyper-local expression of what the community wants and needs in those spaces. That’s great. So you also mentioned skill building. I am not myself particularly good with plants. So if I were to get a DUG plot and I wanted to garden over the course of the summer, where would I start? Could you help me?

Linda Appel Lipsius: So there’s a couple parts, another really great aspect of these gardens is that you, in your early days of gardening, will be gardening right next to someone who has done this forever. And just by almost osmosis you’ll pick up their tips and they’ll lovingly support you as you learn. So that’s one way. And then DUG does a lot of formal structured community education. So we have a series of workshops called Urban Roots, there’s about 10 that are offered through this season. And that’s anywhere from basics of organic planting to minimizing food waste and composting and preserving to… What are some of the other ones? Cover crops, cover crops in the fall. So we do have very structured courses, we have an online masterclass with our amazing Jungle Judy, who’s our horticulturist, where you can learn. And then we have a really great online network called DUG online. So you can just log on, it’s peer to peer, and we also have expert contributions from Jungle Judy.

Jocelyn Hittle: Excellent. So if and when I decide to start gardening for real, I can come to your team for some help. So my sense of urban garden organizations over time is that when they first were starting, they were kind of going rogue and squatting on vacant land that no one was paying attention to. It wasn’t being used for anything else, but it wasn’t theirs. And sometimes people came along and said, “Hey, you’re actually not supposed to be here”. And those gardens had to go away. So I know the urban garden movement or organizations have evolved a lot and are, in the case of DUG, very sophisticated. Can you talk a little bit about that evolution and where you see the organization going in the next say five to 10 years? What’s the next evolution?

Linda Appel Lipsius: Yeah, I mean we grow based on communities coming to us. So we really don’t necessarily impose gardens on communities. So we have gone from over the 2015 to 2020, the organization was building 15 gardens a year, and really aggressively sort of placing gardens around the city. We’ve definitely slowed that down and the evolution is we’re going deeper with what we’re doing. So we’re now doing gardens that, we’re doing a couple this year with a grant that’s looking at adding sensory gardens, so they’re not just food producing but it’s contemplative spaces sort of to that mental health and wellness aspect. We are adding food forests to our gardens, so historically DUG gardens have just been in ground annuals to grow your veggies, but we’re adding perennial trees, bushes and vines. It’s a permaculture concept that’s going to add really significant biodiversity to our gardens, but also be true community resource in a community orchard that the community is caring for. Very different from the plots.

Another sort of aspect of the organization that we’re really starting to develop is we call it community collaborators. So we are partnering with home builders and developers and management companies who want a garden as an amenity for their community, or they’ve already built it and realized, “Hey, just because we built it, they didn’t come. Could you come in and help us”? So that’s more of an earned revenue piece that we’re starting to develop that there’s a huge amount of interest.

So we’re sort of taking it in a lot of different directions for sure. Fundamentally it’s kind of the same as it ever was, and it’s also really interesting, the sort of land availability situation in Denver, we have this sort of collaborative of garden leaders from around the country and talking to my colleagues is in St. Louis, it’s like they just have plot lots everywhere. And here it’s like land is really at a premium but they don’t take up enough space and they’re still, I think we could go from 192 to a thousand if we want it. The demand is there, we have waiting lists for most of our gardens and we could do a lot.

Jocelyn Hittle: Maybe you could speak a little bit more about that demand. There seems to me to have been a real increase in interest in growing one’s own food over the course of the last say 10, 20 years. Certainly there are some great benefits to that. Maybe you can speak a little bit about why you think it is that people are increasingly interested in growing their own food and what you think some of those benefits in particular are for the populations you’re serving.

Linda Appel Lipsius: Where to start? Backing up a little bit, up until the sixties, every American grew their own food. It was what you did, it was what every culture outside of America grows their own food. And the G with science came along and it suddenly became passé to grow your own food, maybe kind of lame, people thought. Gardening got this weird thing. And when you look at just the loss of connection, there’s a lot of people who genuinely do not know that a carrot comes from the ground and not a bag and doesn’t come out nubby like that. And so there’s been so much loss.

And then with COVID, well people had tons of time on their hands. A lot of people were losing their jobs. And then I think with our gardens, we were able to keep our gardens open during COVID. We were one of the few organizations that was, and people said that the community aspect of the work and digging in the soil, which has proven health benefits to everything, just touching the soil, and that it literally saved them. Just being able to go outside to work, hand in hand, to grow your food, to have some agency over your life during that chaotic crazy time was a huge part of it. And then I think the other thing is that health just became way more important to everybody because there was so much sickness and really starting to appreciate, again, you have to take care of your body and you have to put clean inputs, really important and tasty ones because it tastes so much better when you grow it.

Jocelyn Hittle: Yeah, absolutely. So can we talk a little bit about what a day in the life is for you as the director of DUG?

Linda Appel Lipsius: So I get up very, very early. So I will get up at 03:30 to 04:00. I know, and it is…

Jocelyn Hittle: That is intense.

Linda Appel Lipsius: It’s gold. It is gold. I get up and that means I bake my French press coffee, I have two hours of flow, I have two hours of actual thinking work. I have an hour to work out, because when you’re running a business or an organization, as soon as 09:00 hits or 08:00 hits, you’re done. You are everybody else’s property, and that’s fine and that’s great. So that early morning is just such precious time for me. And then also with the kids, it’s in the evening, I’m not going to work, because I’m going to hang out with my kids. And evening is usually just eating and just doing the most vegetative thing I can do, if possible. And get to bed pretty early.

Jocelyn Hittle: And then between nine and when you cut things off so you can have time with your family, what does that look like? Meetings. meetings, meetings?

Linda Appel Lipsius: Yeah. And it’s a mix of, I inherited an extraordinary team, so a lot of team working together and thank God we’re back in the office, team working together, not necessarily coaching but just working with my senior team. And then the other stuff is creating new partnerships, new opportunities, meeting with funders.

Jocelyn Hittle: Geez.

Linda Appel Lipsius: Yeah, just nonstop. And I kind of feel like also in my role, yes I’m in the office but I really need to be out and I need to be showing up, out in the world representing the organization as much as possible. And then again, then there’s the evening, occasionally social things and professional things.

Jocelyn Hittle: And part of that is partnership development, fundraising, all of the things that seem to come along with being at the head of an organization, particularly a nonprofit.

Linda Appel Lipsius: Networking, all the soft things that you didn’t really learn, that are actually where the really important relationships are made, is a lot of that.

Jocelyn Hittle: Absolutely. And I’ve heard this from a lot of folks who are at the head of their organization, whether it’s for-profit or non-profit, that part is an incredibly important part of what they do. Managing their team, helping to support them and help them do their work. And then the other side of that coin, helping to increase the organization’s profile and partnerships and relationships. It’s a really big piece.

Well I’d love to talk a little bit about how you got where you are. You have worn a variety of different hats over the course of your career. So maybe we can start a little bit with your background. You do come from a family that has a business background and maybe you can start a little bit with how that shaped your career trajectory, but really you can start wherever you want. That’s just an obvious spot in your case.

Linda Appel Lipsius: Well I grew up in a small home in Littleton, Colorado, so I am a true native. And so I grew up youngest of four, very much so, and in a very entrepreneurial family. So I did not have the dad who had this sort of corporate 50 year gig at IBM. He was a fundraiser, but then his side hustle was hawking things at the Colorado Shade Fair this or The Stock Show. I grew up at The Stock Show, the Coliseum.

Jocelyn Hittle: There you go.

Linda Appel Lipsius: And stuff like vitamins and little carpet sweepers and, God, what else did he sell? Aloe vera things. And I would be like, I was five or six, so I would go to these things and see these things happening. It was a very lovely, lovely childhood. And then eventually he happened upon these natural cleaning products, which Orange Glo and OxiClean and Orange Clean and he just kept doing it, and that was actually a product that really stuck. And I ended up, my summer job was going out to county fairs pitching things, you’re just hand-to-hand combat. And I always say I can sell anything to anyone, I have to believe in it, but I can sell anything to anyone. And if you think about an 18-year-old kid out there doing magic. So I kind of grew up in that whole kind of funny situation.

So I went to college in New York and then I went to business school, got my MBA in New York as well, which also was pretty great for your listeners, I highly recommend living in different places because it’s just really the culture, even though we’re fairly homogenous, the culture’s pretty different in different cities, especially the coasts. And then for business school, I decided for my internship I would come back into the family business, and by that point the business had really grown and I came on and I set up and ran our European operation, and we had just been selected by Walmart to be a global VPI, a sort of product that they were going to get behind. So I mean I’m like the luckiest kid, I went over there and I set up the entire supply chain, I hired a whole team and I was 30 and I had just this tremendous opportunity. So that was fantastic and a great experience, and I was with the company for about five years, eventually came back to the States, based in LA and then we sold the company, which is great.

And so sold the company and had my first kid in the same week. So my world literally, keep saying, turned right side up. I mean it was like, wow, suddenly things are very different. But it was great and it was very fortunate and took some time obviously with my sweet little baby, Dorothy.

And as things were proceeding with the sale of Orange Glo, I had started talking with a friend of my husband and mine who’s this guy from Bangladesh whose family had started a tea garden and they wanted to bring the teas to the states. So because I had the background in CBG, or consumer packaged goods, I was like, yeah, I’ll do a business model for you. And yeah, I’m just kind of helping out a friend and it became a 15-year career, building Teatulia Organic Teas into a national brand, which was a blast.

And along the way I started another business called the Mamahood, up in the Highlands supporting new and expecting moms in their families. And that one was, I wasn’t operationally involved in that, so I had really great business partners. So I sort of had the idea and we partnered on the strategy.

So that’s the journey. And then eventually I, really with COVID, kind of took a pause and I was like, 15 years, it’s a good run, I have learned so much and I’m ready to blow up my brain again. I just want to learn and do something new. So I stepped down as CEO and the gentleman who I brought in as COO a couple years ago moved into that role. So I’m still on the board, still involved, but just not an operational basis.

Jocelyn Hittle: And then the DUG opportunity came along. How did that happen?

Linda Appel Lipsius: Yeah, yeah, you’re right. So I took some time and then I joined the board of Denver Urban Gardens and I was familiar with the organization and soon after I arrived, the organization sort of had some tumult and the board was looking for an interim part-time executive director and I was like, oh wow, I’m unemployed, I’m always been a little nonprofit curious. Yeah, I’ll step in for a few months and help out. And I found a really extraordinary organization. So now, two years later, no longer interim or part-time, still running the organization. So I always like to say my life is somewhat ruled by serendipity, but I think there’s a lot to it and being open to it and opportunities kind of planned.

Jocelyn Hittle: So can you talk a little bit about what’s been most surprising for you over the course? I mean, we’re hitting on it maybe a little now with some of it is serendipity, you maybe didn’t, when you were a little kid, think, hey, I’m going to run a nonprofit community garden organization. So some of it is one serendipitous moment after the next and it takes you down in a certain direction. But maybe you can talk a little bit about some of the other things that have been surprising for you over the course of this career.

Linda Appel Lipsius: I’ve ha, not every day, as you know, some days are terrible, I’ve just had so much fun. And I think something that as you perceive down the path, you get clearer on what you bring. And have you read the book, The Big Leap?

Jocelyn Hittle: No I haven’t.

Linda Appel Lipsius: When I finally stepped down at Teatulia, I had been working with a coach, Suha Broner, who recommended this book, The Big Leap, that’s all about your zone of genius. And have you heard of that zone of… Okay, so the idea is there’s your zone of genius, there’s a zone of excellence and there’s a zone of competence. Zone of competence, yep, I can do my job, I’m going to keep my job. That’s great. Excellence, you know what, you might even be in the C-suite, that’s great, but it’s still a job. And then there’s your zone of genius, which is where you play that is effortless for you, yet you deliver more than anybody on the team because it’s what you’re meant to do, it’s the right fit. So your employer is getting great value for money because you’re super productive and you’re doing it so beautifully it doesn’t feel like work.

And I feel like as you go down your career path, hopefully, you’re starting to hone in on that. You’re sort of moving a little bit away from what you’ve been told you’re supposed to do to what you’re meant to do. And I do believe that we are all meant to do something. Yeah, it’s just neat and that that’s been something, and mine is very much, yes, I went to business school, yes I can do finance and yes I can do operations and I can do all of it, that’s great, but is it my highest best use?

And really figuring out my highest best use is building things and is strategy and is creating something where there was nothing or connecting the dots. And I am so giddy with enthusiasm that I can usually get people… I’m able to bring people along on the journey too, which is pretty great most of the time, some of the time, whenever it’s appropriate. And that to me, I just get a buzz from that. I love the puzzle, I love the puzzle, and that’s why knowing that’s where I belong and I need to surround myself with people who are more competent and smarter in the other aspects of business, which is also so stimulating, is recognizing that I’m not supposed to be the smartest one in the room. And learning and also acknowledging what you don’t know.

So that’s been pretty cool. And then I think the other aspect of it is figuring out the causes that matter to you, because we spend so much time at work, I really hope people eventually find work that they love. And for me, climate and food, are the most important things. And people sort of asked me if there’s a through line between Teatulia and DUG. I mean there totally is, right? Teatulia, we had a 3,000 acre regenerative organic tea garden in Bangladesh that literally restored the ecosystem and the economy and was incredibly impactful to the entire region. And then we educated consumers on clean food and tea and how the tea industry is a disaster and whatever. And DUG’s kind of the same thing, just at a super hyper-local level, intentional sourcing, growing your own food, regenerative growing. It definitely resonates.

Jocelyn Hittle: One of the things that we are hoping we can do at the Spur campus is to inspire kids, well kids of all ages, I guess, lifelong learners, to think about how they can contribute to food, water, health and sustainability challenges regardless of their background, and maybe regardless of what subject matter they’re most interested in. You could be a kid who wants to fly drones and there’s a lot of opportunity for you in all of those spaces to contribute meaningfully.

And what you just described also is, I think something similar, it’s about finding the right fit for you in your work life and how that right fit can make you a powerful contributor to solving these big global challenges that we know we all need to come together to solve. And it’s partly also about putting together the right team, you mentioned wanting to have people around you who are really good at the things that maybe you’re not, your, what do you call it, zone of genius.

Linda Appel Lipsius: Zone of genius.

Jocelyn Hittle: Zone of genius.

Linda Appel Lipsius: Yes.

Jocelyn Hittle: So I think that also connects to a lot of the thinking we’re doing around diversity. So there are a lot of things that you just described in that career path that I think are really resonant for those of us who are thinking about how to make Spur impactful as well. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what would you tell someone who is a young person who is maybe in high school or in college who’s thinking about how they can meaningfully contribute and what guidance you can offer given how much of paths are frequently surprising doors that open that you step through?

Linda Appel Lipsius: I think in terms of valuing the careers that you describe in food, climate, water, all that, I mean without that, there’s nothing. I think if people back up a little bit, and we need lawyers and doctors, I’m not… but at the same time, if we don’t have a healthy thriving planet, it’s so foundational and fundamental, working to improve the sort of world that we live in.

And in terms of, I think finding the path maybe is, I think where you’re going with that, is, I think a couple tips, things I have, it’s like if you think you’re interested in kombucha, I don’t know, go to everything. Showing up is the first, second and third thing you need to do, just go. If you’re like, oh, I’m really tired and I want to watch this show and there’s somebody talking about something, it’s like, just go. Because you never know who you’re going to meet and you never know the spark that that is going to be sort of lit.

I also, and if I’m going down a totally different path, you can stop me, but I also think in addition to going to everything, maybe more importantly, talk to everyone. Everyone who’s even tangentially interested. Yeah, you’ve got your drone friend, you’ve got your ag friend, just keep talking, and then the connections will start because there’s so little any of us now, and everyone has such a different perspective and exposing yourself to different people and putting out your idea or your entrepreneurial idea to everyone and getting their take on it and just being open to that I think is really, really important. And it’s going to open doors because we’re so all so myopic, it’s just inherently we are, that I think that can create opportunities.

Jocelyn Hittle: Yeah, I think it’s great career advice. Go everywhere, talk to everyone. You never know what connections will come from that.

Linda Appel Lipsius: And education and skills, also super important.

Jocelyn Hittle: Oh, details. Also get an education and have some real skills. That’s a great point.

Linda Appel Lipsius: Yeah. And it’s funny, I got to say, I mean I think an MBA is fantastic. I recommended it for everyone in nonprofit, nonprofit. And only because, at the end of the day, you have to adhere to accounting standards. You have to know how to do a P&L. And I think something that if you want to save the world, that’s great, but it has to be sustainable. It has to be a business or an organization that can survive and make its case in the world. So I view the business degree far less mercenary, it is just a tool to help you accomplish what you want to accomplish.

Jocelyn Hittle: So where can our audience find more information about DUG and about Teatulia, if you want to share that as well. And we’ll link to everything you tell us in the show notes as well.

Linda Appel Lipsius: Yeah, I mean both of my website, so dug.org and teatulia.com. And then like I say with DUG, we’ve got this great network called DUG online that if you’re interested in sort of geeking out on the garden front, you can join that and then come to our gardens, come to our galas, come to our classes and join in the fun.

Jocelyn Hittle: That sounds great, thank you. So I have my final question for you, which is our Spur of the moment question. You don’t know what it is going to be, sometimes I don’t know what it’s going to be until I start it. So here is my question for you. You’ve worn a bunch of different hats over the course of your career. Is there a path not taken that you sometimes wish you had in terms of a career? Like I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was a kid. I’m obviously not that.

Linda Appel Lipsius: And I’m not kissing up when I tell you I want to be a farmer.

Jocelyn Hittle: Okay. I mean, you kind of are, indirectly.

Linda Appel Lipsius: I really like, oh my gosh, I don’t know if it will ever happen, but the idea of truly being out there and growing food and stewarding the land is something I ultimately would like to do.

Jocelyn Hittle: Stewarding the land is something that you are doing through Denver Urban Gardens. So thank you for the work that your organization does. And thank you so much Linda Appel Lipsius for joining us today on Spur of the Moment, really appreciate your time.

The CSU Spur of the Moment Podcast is produced by Kevin Samuelson and our theme music is by Ketsa. Please visit the show notes for links mentioned in this episode. We hope you’ll join us in two weeks for the next episode. Until then, be well.