With the help of self-designated community ambassadors, City Grown Gardens hosts plant, produce, and seed-saving swap meets designed to strengthen both intra-community and inter-community connections among CGG garden recipients and local residents. These gatherings create space for neighbors to share surplus harvests, propagated plants, seeds, and growing knowledge while reinforcing a culture of mutual support rather than one-way distribution. Program participants can host a trade table with their seeds or produce, or just walk around the event with items to trade. To ensure the events remain reciprocal and resource-rich, non-CGG participants are asked to host a trade table with offerings in order to attend. This structure helps maintain balance, encourages active participation, and supports a shared ethic of exchange, ensuring that the swap meets remain community-driven, abundant, and grounded in collaboration.

City Grown Gardens offers two-hour seed harvesting and seed-saving workshops designed to build practical skills and long-term growing independence within the community. These hands-on sessions guide participants through how to properly extract, clean, and dry seeds from common garden crops, while also covering best practices for labeling and storage to maintain seed viability over time. Workshops include a DIY seed envelope activity, allowing participants to leave with both saved seeds and the tools to continue the practice at home. By demystifying seed saving and making it accessible, CGG supports knowledge sharing, resilience, and the preservation of locally adapted plants within and across neighborhoods.

City Grown Gardens provides safety-focused workshops on best practices for water bath and pressure canning to help community members preserve harvested crops responsibly and with confidence. These sessions emphasize the science behind food safety, including acidity levels, processing times, equipment use, and proper storage, while clearly distinguishing when water bath canning is appropriate versus when pressure canning is required. Participants learn to follow tested guidelines, recognize common risks, and avoid unsafe improvisation, ensuring that preserved foods are shelf-stable and safe for household use. By pairing practical instruction with a strong emphasis on safety, CGG supports food preservation skills that extend the value of homegrown produce while protecting individual and community health.

City Grown Gardens offers cooking classes that are both fun and informative, helping participants build confidence in incorporating garden-grown produce into everyday meals. These hands-on sessions focus on simple, adaptable recipes and practical preparation techniques that make it easier to use seasonal vegetables in daily cooking without requiring specialized equipment or advanced skills. The classes intentionally demonstrate how familiar, low-cost staples such as ramen noodles, rice, or flour-based foods can be paired with homegrown produce and herbs to create meals that are more filling, flavorful, and nutritious. By meeting people where they are and honoring existing food practices, CGG supports realistic, accessible approaches to improving nutrition and ensuring that harvests move consistently from the garden bed to the plate.