Welcome to Friends of Tucsons Birthplace

Current weather at Mission Garden

Help Us Through Unusual Times

Please help us emerge strong from COVID-19. The Garden will continue to flourish as long as we tend to its needs. We will do that, with your help. Please also see our statement on Mission Garden’s COVID-19 measures.

Mission Statement

Mission Garden is a living agricultural museum of Sonoran Desert-adapted heritage fruit-trees, traditional local heirloom crops and edible native plants. We are a non-profit, volunteer-based educational organization with no religious affiliations. Our primary mission is to preserve, transmit and revive the region’s rich agricultural heritage by growing garden plots representative of more than 4000 years of continuous cultivation in the Tucson Basin.

Visit us and see the garden. Dogs welcome when on leash.
Hours

Open Wednesday – Saturdays, 8 a.m. – 2 p.m.
(April – September, 8 a.m. – 12 p.m.)
Closed major holidays
$5 per person suggested donation

Closed for the following 2020-21 holiday dates

November 26
December 25-26
January 1-2

Tours

Guided tours available Wednesday through Saturday with a reservation (parties of 10 or less). $5 per person. For tours contact us at 520-955-5200 or missiongarden.tucson@gmail.com.

See photos of Mission Garden work and volunteers here.

For upcoming workshops, trips and other events, and for produce currently on sale, see our News and Events page.

To volunteer, write to missiongarden.tucson@gmail.com or call 520-955-5200.

Important news about FOTB and Tucson Origins Heritage Park

More stories at the Press and Media page

New York Times article on 36 Hours in Tucson

AZ Daily Star article on grading of the Convento site http://tucson.com/news/local/city-halts-work-after-earth-movers-grade-tucson-s-birthplace/article_5a40210a-e07a-5486-9d29-f287a7939127.html#tracking-source=home-latest-1

KVOA story about the same event: http://www.kvoa.com/story/37044901/tucson-group-claims-city-began-project-on-protected-land

Welcome, New York Times Readers!

Tucson was featured on the front page of the New York Times in celebration of our designation as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World City of Gastronomy. Mission Garden and FOTB played an essential role in gaining our home town that prestigious title, so we got both a photo and a nice nod in the article by Kim Severson.

Mission Garden contains orchards and vegetable gardens representing Tucson’s 4,000 years of agricultural history. Credit Chris Hinkle for The New York Times

Not far from downtown, a nonprofit group is recreating a Spanish colonial walled garden like the ones Father Kino built. The Mission Garden project is a history lesson on four acres, tracing agricultural practices that began on the site with the Hohokam and Tohono O’odham tribes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/dining/tucson-food-unesco.html

USA Today

“Chasing the sources in Tucson’s budding food scene,” by Ashley Day (August 19, 2016).

The Guardian

“Tucson, Arizona, cultivates its foodie reputation – with a nod from UNESCO,” by Kate Eshelby (July 17, 2016).