Rise Garden opens for first harvest: Produce and proceeds benefit Switchpoint, homeless in St. George

ST. GEORGE — A new source for fresh, locally grown produce will make healthy, sustainable food available to St. George residents and the homeless. 

The Rise Garden greenhouse on the Switchpoint campus, St. George, Utah, June 30, 2022 | Photo by E. George Goold, St. George News

The Rise Garden at Switchpoint held its grand opening Thursday morning to celebrate its first harvest. The greenhouse is on the Switchpoint campus at 948 North 1300 W in St. George.

As previously reported in St. George News, Switchpoint is a multi-faceted resource center for the homeless and unemployed residents of St. George.

Switchpoint Development Director Linda Stay focused on the features of the new Rise Garden facility in front of about 100 supporters and dignitaries at Thursday’s ceremony.

“People that are living in extreme poverty and especially homelessness don’t have access to nutrient-dense food,” Stay said. “They’re living on dollar menus, they’re living on ramen noodles and whatever they can scrounge and find.”

Besides providing healthy, leafy greens for the soup kitchen at Switchpoint, the Rise Garden also offers subscriptions for residents who want easy access to affordable, nutrient-rich fresh garden vegetables.

“We need our community to purchase 80 percent of the product we grow here, and the other 20 percent goes to our house and our residents,” Stay said. “That 20 percent will go to our residents, to our soup kitchen, to our new 24-hour childcare facility.”

“For every four items that you purchase, one is donated to Switchpoint for the house,” Stay added. “You’re helping us feed our clients incredible, incredible food.”

The greenhouse will produce over 100,000 plants a year, Stay said, averaging 7,000 plants per month. 

Utilizing new production methods in aeroponic tower gardening, the facility will generate 10 times the amount of product using only 10 percent of the land and water required to grow that much produce using traditional farming methods.

In the tour of the greenhouse, master gardener Bonnie Pendleton described the seed-to-harvest process of each plant.

Master gardener Bonnie Pendleton among the towers at Rise Garden on the campus of Switchpoint, St. George, Utah, June 30, 2022 | Photo by E. George Goold, St. George News

Seeds are grown in long trays and then transplanted into vertical towers that circulate water through the plants’ roots continually. Almost no soil is required to grow the plants.

“This Rise Garden is beyond unbelievable,” Pendleton said. “We have some wonderful people coming through and helping us plant the seed.”

She went on to say that seeds grow for two weeks in the trays before going to the towers, where they flower for 30 days. Start to finish, a full head of lettuce is grown in six weeks.

Basil, cilantro, thyme and chives are just some of the fresh herbs that grow in the greenhouse along with vegetables and lettuce.

“Water for 3 minutes, air for 12, every single time the tower is watered, the plants get nutrients,” said Pendelton, describing the science happening in the greenhouse. 

She displayed a basketball-sized head of leafy green lettuce to demonstrate her point.

“This is a month old,” she said. “And it uses 90 percent less water than it would if it was in the ground.”

The Rise Garden is the first of its kind in Utah and is one of only 300 similar facilities around the world.

St. George Mayor Michele Randall has been a vocal and active supporter of Switchpoint since it opened in 2014 when she was on the city council.

“We couldn’t have even fathomed what Switchpoint would do, that Carol (Hollowell, Executive Director of Switchpoint) and Linda (Stay) and the whole team would take it and run, that they have created all these businesses not only to benefit our community but to benefit the residents here at Switchpoint,” Randall said. 

“This garden is just the epitome of everything they’ve done,” she added. “Switchpoint is the model for the entire state of Utah and I think the country. I am so excited to purchase from the garden and give back to Switchpoint.”

Click here to learn more about how to purchase fresh vegetables from the Rise Garden.

Photo Gallery

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2022, all rights reserved.

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!