How does community gardens work

You can also find useful resources online. This is the most crucial step in planning a community garden. Look around your neighborhood for a lot that has the following traits:. Contact the owner of the site you like best to ask whether you can use the land. If the owner agrees, the next step is to negotiate a lease. Try to lease the land for at least three years.

Include a waiver that protects the owner from liability if anyone is injured while working in the garden. Look into the possibility of buying liability insurance to protect yourself in the same case. Before you sign your lease, have the soil at the site tested for possible pollutants, such as heavy metals. Decide what you want your community garden to include. Measure the site and draw out a simple scale map that you can use to plan out the location of different components, such as garden beds and paths.

Then meet with your garden group to discuss how you want to lay out your garden. Some other nice elements to include are flower beds, fruit trees, and a community bulletin board. Another possible feature is a special garden area just for kids, who are usually more interested in the process of digging and planting than in the size of the harvest.

Even if all the labor is provided by volunteers, you still need to pay to lease the land and to buy seeds, tools, fertilizer, compost, and other garden needs. Start out with just a basic garden design, and save some of your other ideas to be added in future years. According to UrbanAgLaw. These groups do not have to pay taxes as long as they earn no money from their activities.

Organize teams of volunteers to do the following:. Before you can actually start gardening, you need to set some rules. Get the rest of the gardeners involved in this process, since people are more likely to follow rules they have helped to create. Now that you have your funds in hand, your site prepared, and your rules laid out, your community garden is ready to open for business. Like all volunteer work, helping to maintain a community garden can be a source of great satisfaction.

When members stop showing up, their plots can become overgrown or go to seed, inviting pests and keeping the garden from looking its best. Sadly, vandalism in the form of property destruction or defacement also occurs.

While non-members are the most obvious culprits, intra-garden shenanigans are known to occur, too! The key to success for community gardens is not only preventing problems from ever occurring, but also working together to solve them when they do inevitably occur.

The problem: Gardener drop-out Like all volunteer work, helping to maintain a community garden can be a source of great satisfaction. Some solutions: Get a deposit. Most gardens collect annual dues from members. These pay for shared supplies and help to ensure that members will take their gardening responsibilities seriously.

In addition, you can consider collecting a one-time maintenance deposit: if the member wants to leave the garden and has kept their plot in good order, they get their money back.

Institute a forfeiture policy. Make commitments count. When they join, have members commit to doing a certain amount of work per week or month, and have them sign in on an attendance sheet when they do their work. As well as her national role as Chair, Tina promotes the ethos and mission of DoSomething! Growing community - a community gardener's story Read ». Growing from seed Read ». Paving our market gardens - choosing suburbs over food Read ».

Foodwise Articles. The community gardening movement Author Tina Jackson Community gardens are places where people come together to grow food, foster good health, green urban environments, support life long learning and cultivate vibrant communities. A history Gardening on public land dates back to the early 19th century when the British Government allocated plots of land to the poor to grow vegetables and flowers.

The growing allure Community gardens are being recognised as an innovative way to grow food and improve health. Getting a garden off the ground Once the idea for a community garden takes off and a group is formed, locating and securing a suitable site sometimes takes a while, but there are now many local examples of successful gardens for inspiration.

For ideas on how to start a community garden head to the Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network For three examples on how some councils are supporting community gardens see: City of Sydney Randwick North Sydney To read more about Mosman Community Gardeners, head to their website.

Visibility is also important for safety reasons. In addition to being visible, the garden needs to be accessible to both gardeners and large vehicles such as delivery trucks.

You might not be able to find a location with all of the following, but consider each:. Look to the south for large buildings or trees that will shade the site. Some shade on the site can be a nice relief on hot summer days, but a very shady site will be a challenge for growing vegetables.

Likewise, too much wind will stunt plant growth. Finally, does it look like your prospective garden will flood? Good gardens start with the great soil! Urban soil is often compacted, full of weed seeds, and sometimes contaminated.

Take a pick or shovel and pot-hole around your prospective site. Is the soil heavy clay, sandy, full of rocks, rubble, or trash? Is it dark with organic matter or does it look like the topsoil was long scraped off? Read more about evaluating soil. Become a historian and find out about the site history. Determine if nearby major industries might have shed pollutants on the site.

For more information on soil contaminants, see the Discover Soils section on Soil Contaminants. The other major consideration when choosing a site is the landowner. Different types of landowners present different benefits and challenges to the garden—both in initial development and long-term stability. While many landowners are potentially willing to host a community garden, the differences between them most often boil down to the differences between public landowners such as a city and private landowners such as an individual, citizens' group, or an agency like a church.

Read about Quebec's unique history of urban gardening here. In many cases, urban farmers and community gardeners will arrange to lease land from an individual landowner or city agencies. Approach the landowner with a brief proposal in a letter. If they reply favorably, meet to work out further details from garden design to clean up at the project close and finalize everything in writing. Individual landowners might be easier to negotiate with than city agencies with their bureaucracy, but municipalities might be willing to give you a longer lease.

Ideally, you will secure at least 3 years on your new site. Land tenure will affect whether you want to plant fruit trees in the ground or in barrels, the amount of soil building and physical infrastructure you build, etc. Remember to consult neighbors and community groups. If you want to consider buying vacant urban land either as an individual or community gardening group, be aware that loans for vacant land work differently than home loans.

You could make owning land more affordable through partnerships with land trusts or reduce your tax liability by having your land designated as agricultural or open space. While ownership means a certain amount of stability especially if you purchase the land outright at an auction , it also means full responsibility for things like utilities and insurance.

There are three costs related to water. The first is access to a water meter. This can be one of the largest upfront costs. This can often be done for relatively low cost. Public agencies often have staff qualified to do this work, or private citizens can do it with volunteer labor, but it helps to have a skilled volunteer. The third cost is the ongoing cost of the water. No matter who the landowner is, gardeners are usually held responsible for the cost of the water they use throughout a growing season.

Other utilities include electricity handy for operating power tools and lights , trash or green waste you might not compost everything yourself! Be sure to negotiate who will pay for what. Different types of landowners will have different requirements regarding insurance. Churches or other land-owning non-profits are also familiar with the costs of insuring the land they own, and changes may not be necessary to turn parts of their land into a garden.

In this case, it may be best to seek out a third party that would be willing to support the community garden by handling the insurance. Different ownership structures may make you eligible for different resources to assist with building the garden. Private dollars can be sought to develop a garden on either public or private land.

Consider partnering with or forming a non-profit to take advantage of tax-exempt status for donations. The first step in building a garden is to assess your soil for possible contaminants. Gardens can include physical infrastructure, ranging from a simple shed for tools to raised beds, hoop houses, greenhouses, and cold frames.

More involved infrastructure might include community gathering places, produce stands, and food preparation areas. Garden design links together this infrastructure to support your garden goals. As you sketch out your design, think about the physical elements at your site.

Consider the direction of sun and wind exposure. Will you have good access to water with your design? Factor in the influence of adjacent buildings and trees, as well as low-lying areas prone to flooding. You should also consider the proximity to the street and entrance. Most likely, you want to organize everything around your primary goal of food production. But even the production area design will be dictated by your garden structure: Is it a community farm where everybody works the beds together, or do gardener work individual plots?

In any case, locate the production beds in an area with good sun, lower wind exposure, and good water access. As you design your production area, think about bed layout and whether or not to make raised beds.

Raised beds can range from paths between soil mounds to shallow boxes resting on the native soil. They can even be boxes several feet tall physically separated from the native soil.