Luscher Farm Park/ Friends of Luscher Farm/ Lake Oswego, OR. The historic 100+ acre Luscher Farm Park is owned by the City of Lake Oswego, OR (a suburb of Portland) and operated by the City’s Parks & Recreation Department. Friends of Luscher Farm (FOLF) is an all-volunteer non-profit that advocates for and supports the Park’s agricultural and environmental programs, natural resource protection and enhancement, and historical preservation.
Uniquely, the Park includes a 12-acre working farm (Wild Geese Farm CSA) and the largest public clematis garden in North America (the Rogerson Clematis Collection).
Current programs—all organic—also include 160 Community Gardens, 35 Demonstration Gardens, a Pollinator Garden, vestiges of farm family orchards, as well as a variety of agricultural and environmental-themed classes, summer camps, field trips, and other learning events for both children and adults.
And beyond the namesake Luscher Farm—the core of which is a Clackamas County historic landmark and the area’s most intact example of an early 1900s-era family farm—the Park extends eastward to include an additional 55 acres of open, rolling rangeland, creeks & wetlands, hedgerows and important wildlife habitat.
Launched in 2023, FOLF’s Harvest Helpers is an all-volunteer effort to harvest excess produce from the Luscher Community & Demonstration Gardens and donate it to our City’s food assistance programs: the Hunger Fighters Oregon food pantry and Lake Oswego Meals On Wheels.
The Harvest Helper team gets to work each winter—managing the Park’s seed inventory, making donation requests (thank you your West Coast Seeds!), stocking the Luscher Seed Library (available to all gardeners), and seed-starting in the Children’s Garden Greenhouse (a 2022 gift from FOLF).
This year (2025) we grew some 3,000 starts—most to grow in our Gardens, but also some donated to food pantry clients so they could grow their own.
From mid-May to early October, Harvest Helper volunteers harvest, prep and make deliveries twice a week.
Our first year, we donated 1,500 pounds of fresh, Luscher-grown veggies and fruit. Year 2—with more awareness & interest among Community Gardeners—we donated some 3,200 pounds. This year (2025), we’re on track to do even more.
Among Luscher gardeners, the Harvest Helpers program has strengthened our sense of community, created a shared purpose, and elevated the rewards of gardening.
Collaborating with our food assistance program partners to better understand the needs of the people they serve, enables us to be more intentional about growing to meet those needs.
Importantly, we are richly rewarded to have such a bountiful, magical park in our city. And we hope we’re honoring the Park’s legacy of ‘family farming’: neighbors helping to feed neighbors.
