Growing your own food and giving it to others is a gift. A year-old GIFT Gardens program in the Quad Cities plans to grow.
After a successful inaugural year, GIFT (Growing Illowa Food Together) Gardens is returning for the 2026 growing season (until November), inviting community members across the Quad Cities to again plant with purpose and share their harvest with neighbors in need.
GIFT Gardens is a partnership among Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, University of Illinois Extension, River Bend Food Bank, and Tapestry Farms. The program encourages home gardeners, community gardeners, and first-time growers alike to plant an extra row, pot, or plot of produce to donate to local food pantries.
In 2025, GIFT Gardens brought together over 80 growers who collectively donated 64,063 pounds of fresh produce, helping increase access to healthy food at a time when food insecurity continues to rise. The effort included individuals, families, and groups of people. Donations ranged from 20 pounds of tomatoes grown in East Moline to thousands of pounds of produce grown at a community garden in north Davenport.
Food was distributed to 18 different pantries and community sites across the QCA. This year's growing goal is to exceed 70,000 pounds of food.
“We’re excited to welcome even more gardeners this season and continue building a culture of sharing and community generosity,” Ann McGlynn, executive director of Tapestry Farms, said Monday, noting participants will have access to orientation sessions, connections to local pantry partners, and gardening support throughout the season, including guidance from horticulture professionals and special “lunch-and-learn” series.
“Opportunities like the GIFT Gardens initiative are vital to River Bend Food Bank because they strengthen our local food supply at a time when many food banks are experiencing uncertainty,” says Chris Ford, CEO of the River Bend Food Bank. “Changes to state and federal nutrition programs can make it harder to keep shelves stocked with healthy options. By empowering community members to grow and share fresh produce, GIFT Gardens helps fill some of these gaps."
"This ensures families across the Quad Cities continue to have access to healthy food and that River Bend Food Bank can remain resilient and responsive to its neighbors," he said.
At a Monday press conference at the Iowa State University Scott County Extension office in Bettendorf, Tayler Louscher, University of Illinois Extension Educator, said the program is “about neighbors helping neighbors. It's about recognizing that access to fresh, nutritious food isn't a luxury.”
“It's a foundation to health, dignity and thriving community communities,” she said. The program partnership represents a “shared goal of collaboratively nourishing our neighbors. And that need is real in our communities,” Louscher said. “The most recent Quad City Community Health needs assessment found that nearly 39% of residents across Rock Island and Scott counties either ran out of food within the past year or were worried that they would run out of food in the past year. So we know that that has a big impact when families don't know where their next meal is coming from.”
In the U.S., 47 million people (including 14 million children) experience food insecurity annually – meaning they don’t have enough to eat and don’t know where their next meal will come from, including 14.7% of Rock Island County’s population and 12.2% of Scott County.
“It affects everything from physical health and chronic disease management and prevention, mental well-being, and even children thriving in their school day,” Louscher said Monday. “And at the same time, rising cost of living, cuts to federal nutrition programs and increased demand have stretched food pantries and food banks to their maximum, just as neighbors are reaching out when they need it the most.
“So in the face of these challenges, we've seen something really powerful happen through this project,” she said of GIFT Gardens. “In our first year, we saw community members step forward to help in a meaningful and tangible way in our communities, which has been truly amazing to see.
"And that's where, that's where this project comes in. We empower folks to come take part to buy their planting, growing, learning, donating and supporting. We are not just addressing food insecurity in our community, we are also trying to collaborate and we're reaching out hands to our neighbors and other community members.”
“With additional restrictions on who can receive food stamps and the increasing prices of groceries, the challenge of hunger in our community is growing,” McGlynn said. “Resources to feed people with nourishing, nutrient-dense food are more important now than ever. GIFT Gardens, we hope, will gather gardeners from all skill levels and experience to help ensure that people with limited resources will not just have enough food to eat, but enough good food to eat.”
There is a list of participating food pantries on the Tapestry Farms website.
Tapestry Farms invests in the lives of refugees who resettle in the Quad Cities, focusing on access, urban farming, and building a welcoming future. The organization persistently works to eliminate barriers refugees face in areas such as housing, education, medical and mental health care, employment, food, transportation, community belonging, and the path to citizenship.
“These food pantries are in neighborhoods scattered throughout the Quad Cities,” McGlynn said. “We set out exactly what time they are available to take donations, the contact person, all of that. And we'll continue to update that spreadsheet as the growing season goes on. It does not matter how big of a growing space you have. One tomato plant in a big patio pot is perfectly wonderful or it could be a large backyard garden.
No growing experience required
“It doesn't matter if you've never grown anything before,” she said. “Just for a little inspiration, when I started Tapestry Farms, I had never gardened a day in my life. We have support available and we'll cheer you on. It doesn't matter if you don't know how to donate. We'll help you make that connection. What does matter is that we believe in the generosity of this community and in the hope that the people of the Quad Cities living in a region with some of the richest soil in the world, can ensure that all of our neighbors are abundantly fed.”
Fidele Muragara, a refugee from Congo who came with his family to the U.S. in 2017, is now a junior at St. Ambrose University studying engineering.
“When they come to America, to find produce is very hard,” he said of refugees seeking healthy fruits and vegetables. “You have a lot of processed food all over. It is accessible, but fresh produce is hard to find. And so the adults, they have hard time. Their body can adjust to the processed food and so they have hard time and usually they end up sick.”
“Greenery food is very hard to find. But processed is very easy. And so I can't stress enough how important it is,” Muragara said Monday. “My mom, even to this day, she received help from Tapestry Farms. If she need produce like fresh, she goes for Tapestry Farms.”
Mitchell Walker, who works for University of Illinois Extension, has grown a garden in Moline’s Floreciente neighborhood.
“We felt good and proud of what we had grown. We'd grown about 40 pounds of food and we decided to set up a produce pop-up where the neighborhood could come out and grab some of the produce that we had grown,” he said. “And it was gone in 20 minutes with a line out the door. We did not have nearly enough food. And we quickly learned that the capacity that our garden ad to grow was insufficient to fill the need in that neighborhood. So we started reaching out to our friends, Tapestry Farms, Asbury Gardens and neighbors, people who were growing food in their backyard and said, hey, can you give us your excess, give us what you aren't using and we'll get it where it needs to go.
“And we had such an influx of food from just asking our friends to give us their excess that we ended up having more than enough and ended up being able to distribute that food to other places that needed it, finding other partners and other ways to get that food out to where it needed to go,” Walker said of how GIFT Gardens was launched. “That idea of asking your friends to please give us what you are using and help us get it to where it needs to go. It's been inspirational to see it go from a small neighborhood plan to this Quad-City spanning program. And we hope you will help us grow this year too.”
Asbury has produced 900,000 pounds
Dave Phillips, coordinator of the 24-year-old garden ministry program of Asbury Methodist Church in Bettendorf, said they’ve grown about 900,000 pounds of fresh vegetables which they’ve distributed to food pantries, home shelters, meal sites, food-challenged families and senior living, low-income apartment complexes. In 2025, Asbury Gardens donated 56,000 pounds for GIFT Gardens and their own goal this year is 70,000 pounds.
“This has been a very rewarding ministry. We've got a lot of volunteers from different organizations in Quad Cities this year,” Phillips said. “We've got volunteers coming on board, and it's just such a pleasure to be involved in this. The places we give to, they're so appreciative of getting fresh vegetables. In fact, food pantries never have needed fresh vegetables more than they need them now. So it's, again, just a blessing to be a part of this.”
Emily Swihart, University of Illinois Extension Educator, said the Midwest has “the most abundant soil, most fertile soil. Our climate is just perfectly suited to growing a massive amount of food. We have neighbors, we have community members who are willing to put in the work, who are willing to do a little bit more,” she said. “That's what GIFT Gardens is about, doing just a little bit more for others. Growing Illowa Food Together is a beautiful acronym because when you give, you receive.
“When you are giving your produce, when you're giving your time and your talents, you are also receiving in return,” Swihart said. “Our neighbors are healthier. Our communities are stronger. We get to build relationships with people that we maybe haven't been able to interact with before. We get to see children thrive.
"Some of those children are children with our grandchildren in the classroom, with our kids playing ball. Some of them are ones we don't know. And yet the fruits of those gifts, of that nourishment will ripen later on and benefit us as Quad Citians, as Midwesterners, as citizens of this globe," she added.
“If you have a small garden, are you excluded from this? Absolutely not. Every donation matters,” Swihart said. “You can grow a tomato, eat what you want and give the rest to the GIFT Gardens program. If you don't have anywhere to grow, grow some herbs. Dishes are more flavorful with fresh herbs. So grow some herbs in a container. If you want to volunteer, join the GIFT Gardens.”
“Join us. No question is a stupid question,” she added. “We'll start from the beginning and we'll go through the end of the growing season. You're not alone. So grow. If you're a beginner gardener, this is the perfect place to do it. If you've been gardening for many, many years, that is hard-earned knowledge. Use it to pass it on like that gift to others. So join us. That is my message.”
Community members interested in participating can learn more and sign up at giftgardensqc.org. Food pantries interested in becoming donation sites are also encouraged to visit the website to sign up.
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