For Everyone
Support or join an existing garden. With an estimated 18,000 Community Gardens throughout the United States and Canada, there is a chance that a garden already exists in your region. You can contact your nearest garden to find out how you can become a member or what kind of services and volunteer opportunities are available.Start a community garden. While starting a community garden is by no means a fast process, the good news is that there are many resources available in a variety of different forms to help you as you navigate through selecting a site, forming a committee, raising funds and understanding insurance. Once you are versed in these basics of starting a garden, you can purchase a comprehensive curriculum from the American Community Gardening Association for a more in-depth look into the practices and strategies of successful gardens. The ACGA also offers two-day trainings based on this curriculum. And the Enterprise Foundation's Neighborhood Green Guide for Community Based Organizations includes step-by-step instructions for getting your garden started. You can also view a sample community garden contract from the University of California and learn more about things to consider when starting a garden.
To pose questions to master gardeners, community garden coordinators and other veterans of the community garden world, join the ACGA listserv.
Support policies that support community gardens. Don't have the time or resources to support or start a Community Garden, but you like the idea of having them around? Support through your vote by understanding the issues that affect Community Gardens and who supports them. See our Policy & Advocacy page for issues that relate to the long-term sustainability of these neighborhood treasures.
Become a Master Gardener. The Master Gardener program, conducted throughout the United States and Canada, is a two-part educational effort in which avid gardeners are provided many hours of intense home horticulture training, and in return they "pay back" local university extension agents through volunteerism. Master Gardeners assist with garden lectures, exhibits, demonstrations, school and community gardening, phone diagnostic service, research, and many other projects. Find a Master Gardener program near you for more information.
For Existing Community Gardens
Understand how to protect your garden from development. Depending on the type of lease or ownership you have over a community garden, the threat of development may always be a constant concern. After losing two community gardens to development, the city of Victoria, B.C. published The Garden City Handbook highlighting how the Gordon Head Allotment Gardens successfully protected their space and advising community gardens about how to handle the difficult question of land tenure. You can also read other cases of communities in New York and Chicago fighting to protect their gardens from development.Work towards financial viability. Financial viability is one of the primary concerns of community gardens. Check out Friends of the Burlington Gardens' fundraising for success manual which addresses important considerations for the financial sustainability of community gardens. Increasingly, community gardeners are bringing their food to market, and there are many groups in different parts of the country that are facilitating this. Two examples are the City Farms Program of Just Food (be sure to check out their tipsheets) and the Community Food Security Center of the Tucson Community Food Bank.
Form community partnerships. If tackling everything on your own seems overwhelming, explore the possibility of working with other community gardens in your area. Many gardens are collaborating in order to organize fundraisers, affect public policy, apply for grants, share lessons learned, sponsor public outreach events, recruit volunteers and educate the community. Both the East New York Gardeners Association and the Sacramento Area Community Garden Coalition serve as great examples of coalitions of gardens working together to strengthen their programs.
Find allies in your municipal government. Even if your local or regional government seems generally unwilling to help establish or protect a community garden, you may be able to dig a little deeper to find some hidden allies amongst certain branches or individuals. Touch base with your municipality's Parks and Recreation Department for a start. In New York City, Greenthumb is the nation's largest program offering direct support to community gardens and is a program of the New York City Parks Department. Likewise in Toronto, the Community Gardens Program is a branch of the city government. For ideas on partnering with additional allies, see Farming from the City Center to the Urban Fringe: Urban Planning and Food Security, a publication of the Community Food Security Coalition's Urban Agriculture Committee.
For School Groups
Incorporate local gardens into your curriculum, plan visits and invite gardeners to speak in your classes. Most gardens offer some sort of educational resources or programs. Garden Mosaics, which launched in 11 U.S. cities, allows community gardeners to pool resources with students and teachers from area schools to improve the gardens, conduct science investigations and encourage people of different ages--and often, very diverse ethnic backgrounds--to learn from each other. By investigating scientific problems in subjects such as land use, nutrition, food systems and agriculture, the Garden Mosaics science projects help educators meet national standards. The National Gardening Association provides information on developing plant-based curricula for grades K-12.For Institutions
Start your own garden. Following the lead of schools and community groups, many institutions, such as hospitals and prisons, are starting their own gardens in order to increase access to more nutritious foods and create stress-reducing environments through "therapeutic horticulture." Vegetable and herb gardens on hospital grounds provide not only healthy foods but also much-needed green spaces. Cut flowers can be sold or used in the hospital, and gardens create opportunities for community members to be involved. The Center for Health Systems and Designs has published a report about the psychological benefits of hospital gardens for patients. The Therapeutic Landscapes Database provides a directory of healthcare facilities, from retirement facilities to cancer centers, with healing gardens. Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, California has an organic garden that grows for its kitchen.The inmates of the Gates Correctional Center in North Carolina grow squash, lettuce, cucumbers and snap beans, onions and potatoes, saving the facility almost $6000 per year in food costs and providing other facilities with fresh food. In Texas, the Capital Area Food Bank's Texas Fresh Approach program supplies hungry Texans with a wide array of fruits and vegetables planted and harvested by Texas inmates on surplus Texas Department of Criminal Justice farmland. Many more examples of innovative gardens associated with institutions are available through WhyHunger's database of USDA Community Food Project grantees. For general information about the kinds of issues to consider when starting a garden, click here.
Support a local garden by purchasing its produce. If you want to get fresh food into your institution before it is possible to get a garden up and running, consider buying food from other local community gardening projects. The Center for Food Justice published a guide for getting food from farms to hospitals, or you can find a community garden in your area and inquire with them directly about what kinds of produce they may be able to provide.
Updated 7/2007
