With rakes and shovels in hand, 40 volunteers with DMB Associates turned a once vacant lot in Mesa into a community garden last week.

I was chopping vegetables for dinner recently when my 14-year-old daughter, Grace, disappeared with the unusable end of the bok choy. She returned five minutes later with paper, a stamping ink pad and the pilfered vegetable.

Celebrate Mother’s Day a little early this year with a free visit to the Desert Botanical Garden. On Friday, May 10, communities around the nation honor the beauty and diversity of our environment with National Public Gardens Day. The Desert Botanical Garden offers free admission from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. that day, as well as free admission to the Spring Butterfly Exhibit from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Agritopia, an agriculturally-focused, multi-use community in Gilbert, is planning what’s shaping to be its largest project since its establishment. Epicenter at Agritopia will be a food-based shopping center established over an estimated 25 acres that aims to showcase local farmers and retailers in an innovative way.

A walk through the Rose Garden at Mesa Community College with its curator includes stops at roses named Chihuly, Julia Childs and Day Breaker. This decades-old garden continues to grow and bloom each year through the work of hundreds of volunteers – and they’re ready to share their expertise.

With so many leafless, spiky plants growing all around us in this desert, roses seem luxuriously soft and frilly — even with their thorns — by contrast.