In this undated photo, Darlene Schacht shows off her artichoke plant grown at the First Avenue Garden, Community Gardens of Tucson’s first site, which no longer exists.
When Mercedes Duffy was about 4 years old she found a head of broccoli on the kitchen counter and she ate it. All of it.
Shortly afterward when asked if she wanted some ice cream, Duffy declined the creamy cool stuff and said she’d like more broccoli.
Duffy, who is now 35 and still loves vegetables, attributes her veggie affinity to her grandmother, Darlene Schacht, cofounder of the Community Gardens of Tucson, who died Feb. 11. She was 82.
The community gardens took root after Schacht took a master gardener course from George Brookbank, then the horticultural agent for the University of Arizona’s Pima County Cooperative Extension. Brookbank died in 2018.
The duo realized that people in Brookbank’s classes needed hands-on experience.
The gardeners “want to learn properly, and they want the camaraderie of gardening with others,” Schacht said in the Star in 2008.
Darlene Schacht loved being outdoors, often hiking and camping in Tucson-area mountains.
Schacht offered her house for meetings, got donations for plots of land, and met every weekend with the gardeners.
“She puts so much time into it, and has for so long, ” Steve Godwin said in the Star in 2008.
The first garden was planted in 1990 in donated ground near First Avenue and Limberlost Road. Today more than 300 gardeners use sustainable gardening practices to grow vegetables and flowers in 20 gardens in neighborhoods across Tucson.