Great idea! You have space, use it. Make sure it's south facing, without many trees or buildings to block the sun. I would start by mapping out the plan for garden beds. If funds are short, I wouldn't bother with raised beds. They can be added later if donations of wood are abundant. I recommend 4x8' beds at least 2 feet apart to allow for paths and reaching the middle from either side. That way, you can add wood in standard 8 foot lenghts later. Once you have your plan, mark them off in the area and have the volunteers go to work removing the sod. The sod can be placed elsewhere if you need to re-sod an area, or broken up in a compost pile near the beds. Trust me, you want a compost pile. Once the area is clear of sod, you should augment the soil with as much compost as your donations/funds will alow. The dirt won't have the nutrients to grow great crops. If you weren't growing for several months, I would suggest just turning over the sod and breaking it up. However, now is the time for salad crops. At least I think it is in your neck of the woods. Plant several types of leaf lettuce, spinach and any greens that are appropriate for your dinner table. I like Salad Bowl, Red Sails, Italiansheir for their rapid growing, color and texture. By growing leaf lettuce according to the spacing on the packet, you can simply trim off the top few inches and let it grow back over a week or two. Radishes and green onions are good to, maybe carrots. I'm not an expert on your aream but that makes for a decent salad in short order (carrots are slower growing). Save the northern most spaces for your tall crops so they don't shade your garden, though come summer time, that may be a good idea for your salad greens so they don't bolt so fast. By tall crops I mean tomatoes. You may want to get your parisioners to donate seedlings since you may not want to mess with growing from seed to start, and may not want to pay to buy them. I hope that helps. Others can help better for your area. Enjoy your garden and best of luck to you! Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's garden adventure.

Hi, When my mother was in a nursing home I brought a batch of plantlets along with pots and soil mix and helped the woman in charge of activities with repotting and watering. Unfortunatly they had a small greenhouse attached to the activities room which I thought would give enough light. It turned out that there was too much heat and the plants didn't survive. Some lingered on for a couple months but none ever bloomed. I guess if they had permitted the residents to take them to thier rooms they would have fared better. Fred in NJ

Probably the easiest to find milkweed seeds are common (A. syriaca), swamp (A. incarnata), butterflyweed (A. tuberosa), and tropical (A. curassavica). The tropical is not native or hardy up north and grown as an annual, but it is readily available and easy to grow. I'm sure if you posted on the seed exchange that you were looking for a large amount of milkweed seed you would get several offers for postage only or maybe even free since it is for a school project. Gardeners are pretty generous I have found especially if you are teaching kids to get involved with nature. Be sure to educate the kids and any plant recipients about the nature of milkweed and that the "milk" inside is an irritant that can cause eye damage if not handled properly. Some varieties like the common milkweed can exude lots of milk when cut while others like butterfly weed are much less drippy. The common is an excellent food source as it gets tall with quite large leaves and spreads a lot, but it may not be wanted in small gardens due to the aggressive nature. It is better for wilder areas. Swamp milkweed is smaller and less aggressive and likes moister soil obviously. Butterfly weed is even smaller and bushier and tolerates dry soil and has a large taproot to seek out moisture. I have had cats on all these kinds although the butterfly weed is less used when other juicier types are available. The butterfly weed is popular when first planted when the leaves are young and tender. In the pic below you can see I had my very first cats on tiny freshly planted seedlings of butterfly weed that I was shocked they even found. I agree with KC that you could try other butterfly host and nectar plants as well for some variety. Hosts for black swallowtails are readily available too. That butterfly life cycle book is excellent. While it doesn't cover all the butterflies it covers most of the common ones with great pictures that are very kid friendly. Most of the plants are easy to start using the wintersowing method. And easy option would be to sow seeds in extra large plastic drink cups, quart size yogurt tubs, or similar containers. The open tops make them easy to sow in, transport, gift, and plant out from. Below is a link the wintersowing FAQ if you aren't familiar with it. Here is a link that might be useful: Wintersowing FAQ

Paula - I'm tickled! I'd love to come back to the spring fling this year! :-D Thank you so much for being a gracious host - I really appreciate(d) it! Re: community gardens - the more I read, the more tricky they seem... mostly because of permissions and personal accountability issues. I work at a private academic institution which owns some vacant lots across the street from the school's nucleus. I think they're holding them until they can develop the land, but that won't be for a while. I'm going to try to get a plan together that I can present that won't cost the university anything. That way, it'll be hard for them to say no. :-) soonergrandmom - i DO have the gardening bug! It's a bit insane, and I have lofty ideas - we'll see if I can implement them! I haven't taken up flying (expensive! time-consuming!), but I LOVE Snoopy... hence the screenname. I'm sorry I don't remember your name, and it's very kind of you to remember mine! I'll do better in the future. :-) ezzirah011- I have had several people tell me about Urban Harvest recently - I'm definitely getting with them to see what we can do together! Thanks for the suggestion and the link! Susan - thanks for the information! There IS a glut of info out there (I currently have around 30 books that I've checked out for gardening how-to's, plans, methodology, etc.). Thanks for the link as well, and for the community garden forum suggestion! I'm in a bit of a unique situation, as the community garden would be for the students, faculty, and staff of a private university and would be integrated with ongoing curriculum, but I'll definitely let everyone know what happens! We've got some students interested (in gardening and in composting!), as well as new freshman learning community plan unrolling (focused on sustainability), and I'm going to try to piggyback the garden on top of that, so we'll see what happens. Dawn - :-) Thank you! We're quite happy, and the wedding went really well (whew!)! And those spider mites were voracious little bugs! The only way I kept them under control at all was through insecticide (boo!), but they never actually died, even from multiple applications. I didn't try the sharp stream of water trick; maybe that or ladybugs would have helped. I finally let them go because spending all that money on poison seemed worse than letting the plants die. :-( And we shall see what happens with the garden - I'm planning this year so that I can secure permissions and start soil preparations for the next growing season. This year, I'm going to be planting in my pots and helping Mom is my "spare time." I know I'll do basil again (SO GOOD!). I might try again with tomatoes, and I'm insisting (ha!) that Mom and I do potatoes and onions. We'll see! :-D Suzie - Excellent link! I do know people at Chesapeake - some of them even left my institution to work there! Thanks for the great suggestion! Chandra - thanks for the information! I've pretty much decided that I'm going to be a guerrilla gardener if my school won't allow a community garden. :-) Of course, they would know who to blame immediately if i chose to focus my efforts on campus, but I'm hoping they'll look at my detailed plan and love it!!!