Behind a Downtown Mesa Apartment Complex, a 28-Bed Garden Grows Food for Families, and Volunteers Can Dig In Nov. 5 and Nov. 19

You would not find it by driving down Main Street. The El Rancho Del Sol Community Garden sits behind an apartment building near Main and Ashland in downtown Mesa, past the parking lot and the dumpsters, inside an orange gate. Inside that gate are 28 garden beds and, on two Thursday mornings a month, a crew of volunteers with gloves and water bottles.

The garden is run by Local First Arizona, the statewide nonprofit best known for its coalition of locally owned businesses. It serves the families who live in the El Rancho Del Sol and El Rancho Del Arte apartment communities, and it is open to outside help. Local First’s volunteer page says the team is preparing all 28 beds for the coming growing season. Shifts run from 8 to 10 a.m. on the first and third Thursdays of each month, which this month means Nov. 5 and Nov. 19.

A garden for more than 100 families

Local First Arizona has overseen the garden since 2019, according to a 2024 feature in Edible Phoenix written by Amelia Goe, through a partnership with the building’s owner, Community Development Partners, and the property management company MEB. The two apartment communities next to the garden house more than 100 low-income working families, the article said.

The idea is straightforward. Residents who have no yard of their own get free space to grow vegetables, herbs and flowers. Children get a place to learn where food comes from. And whatever the beds produce beyond what residents pick for themselves helps stock a food pantry that Local First runs inside the same apartment complex.

The neighborhood needs that produce. The Edible Phoenix feature described the area as a food desert, where the only groceries within walking distance came from a corner market selling mostly processed snacks, frozen desserts, fried foods and sugary drinks. A bed of leafy greens or a bush of basil a few steps from the front door is a small fix, but a real one.

Residents have taken to it. The 2024 article introduced Kathleen, a resident who tends her own plot and has learned from Local First staff which seeds to plant each season. She grows flowers to display at home as well as food. “My flower bed is stunning,” she told the magazine.

From the garden bed to the pantry shelf

The garden and the pantry run on the same schedule. Local First’s Choice Food Pantry in Mesa operates on the first and third Thursdays inside the Del Sol Apartments at 659 E. Main St., serving residents of the low-income housing community. Volunteers on the morning shift, from 9:15 to 11:15 a.m., sort food donations. The afternoon shift, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., runs the pantry itself and talks with the families who come in.

It is a choice pantry, which means residents pick their own items rather than receiving a pre-packed box. A listing for the garden shifts on JustServe, the volunteer-matching site, notes that part of a garden volunteer’s job can be carrying the harvest to the Local First Community Kitchen in Mesa for the pantry.

Fresh produce from the garden is only part of what fills the shelves. The Edible Phoenix feature reported that partnerships with United Food Bank and Waste Not Arizona supplied more than 400 pounds of produce a month at the time, along with canned and dry goods, deli meats, dairy, bread and bottled water. Depending on the season, the garden’s own harvest has included green onions, herbs, leafy greens, root vegetables and cut flowers. In spring and summer, the article said, the pantry often smelled of basil from bushes that needed picking every week.

Gabe Gardner, who was Local First’s director of food entrepreneurship when the article ran, described the goal in broad terms. “The work we’re doing here in Mesa is really about creating community through food,” he told Edible Phoenix. “We’re trying to solve a lot of systemic problems in our food system by addressing it from a holistic viewpoint.”

Kids, worms and okra seeds

Children are a big part of the garden’s life. In 2024, Local First was partnering with Cultural Coalition once a month to teach kids in the garden and in an indoor grow house when the weather was too hot or cold. Goe’s account of a typical program day has children ages 4 to 12 running from the apartment building to the orange gate after a snack, asking which bugs they would see that day, and shrieking when they turned up worms in the soil.

On the day she described, the kids collected dried okra pods so the seeds could be saved and planted the next season. That small lesson sums up how the garden works: very little is wasted, and the people who use it learn as they go.

We could not confirm whether the Cultural Coalition program still runs on the same schedule this fall. Families interested in the youth activities should ask Local First directly.

What volunteers actually do

Garden shifts are hands-on and depend on the season. The volunteer listings on Local First’s site, Idealist and JustServe mention watering, weeding, planting, harvesting, composting and general garden maintenance and cleanup, and the JustServe listing adds building and filling new garden beds. Right now the focus is getting all 28 beds ready for the cool season.

The schedule shifts with the weather. From October through April, shifts run from 8 to 10 a.m. From May through September, they move earlier, 7 to 9 a.m., to beat the heat. The Idealist listing shows the current run of dates continuing through Dec. 17.

The listings ask volunteers to bring plenty of water, sun protection and garden gloves if they have them. Parking is in the lot behind the El Rancho Del Sol apartments or on Ashland, just off Main Street. The garden address is 701 E. Main St., Mesa, and volunteers should look for the orange gate behind the building.

A few rules apply. Idealist lists the minimum age as 18, while noting that anyone under 18 must come with an adult, and every volunteer signs a waiver before a shift. JustServe describes the project as suitable for all ages, so families planning to bring children should confirm with Local First first. Volunteers can come once or sign up for every first or third Thursday.

How to sign up

Registration runs through Local First Arizona’s healthy food volunteer page at localfirstaz.com/food-volunteers, which also lists the Mesa and Glendale pantry shifts and The People’s Garden in Phoenix. The JustServe listing names Gina Gral as the point of contact and gives the email volunteer@localfirstaz.com.

For gardeners who would rather grow than volunteer, Local First also maintains the Good Food Finder at goodfoodfinderaz.com, a statewide directory where users can filter for community gardens and find a plot closer to home. That is useful for anyone in San Tan Valley, Queen Creek or Gilbert who likes the idea of a shared garden but does not want to drive to downtown Mesa twice a month.

For those who do make the trip, the work is simple and the payoff is visible. Two hours of weeding and compost turning on a cool November morning helps fill 28 beds that will feed neighbors through the winter, and some of what grows there will be on a pantry shelf down the hall within weeks.