McAllister House Museum

The Broadmoor Garden Club (BGC) will use the 2026 Common Ground Collaborative grant to expand its community garden at the historic McAllister House Museum in Colorado Springs. This project, which began in spring 2025, was designed to provide gardening training for BGC members, enhance the museum's gardens, and provide a demonstration garden to benefit the community.

The grant would also allow BGC to add a new community partner: the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind (CSDB). Working with their Bridges to Life post-secondary jobs program, BGC will train CSDB graduates. Anna Kruse, a deaf professional fine gardener, will serve as teacher/translator and be compensated with grant funds. This addresses some of the extremely high unemployment levels in the deaf community and an undersupply of skilled gardeners in Colorado Springs. The goal is to train four CSDB graduates in the first year.

Gardening in Colorado Springs is extraordinarily hard–arid, cold, windy, and overrun with mule deer. BGC has battle-hardened gardeners willing to teach others. In 2023, the club published an updated garden guide called “Poppies, Piñons and Peas” to share knowledge. Now they are taking it further with a physical garden featuring mainly natives as a teaching hub. The club has completed two-thirds of the planting and now seeks grant funds to add dwarf native conifers and specialized natives for shade (not available locally), plus educational signage.