Community garden idea. Need some experienced insight.

10 years ago

So here's some background, before I get to my questions. I apologize if this turns into a novel:

I'm a science teacher at our town's high school. Among other things, I teach biology and experimental design, and we've been working in the experimental design class this year on some non-traditional gardening methods (that's just a small part of it). I have a garden at my house and we do well enough with it that we typically start the growing season off with plenty of stuff still canned from the year before. My wife and I have been talking about the idea of starting a community garden, and I mentioned the idea to my students a few weeks ago and they won't stop talking about it now!

Our county is large and rural. We are the only high school in the county, and over 65% of our students live below the poverty line. The elementary school down the street from us has a 93% poverty rate among their students. On the other hand, there are a lot of people in the county that have very progressive agricultural methods. For example, I've worked at a large, hydroponic greenhouse in town for the past two summers. It's interesting for sure, but he only sells commercially and not to the public with the exception of farmers' markets (which we have May - November). The problem there is that everything for sale at the farmers' market is so expensive, so a lot of people (myself included) don't shop there because we can't afford it when there's a grocery store a mile down the road with produce half the price. Like a lot of places, people might like the IDEA of locally-grown, organic produce, but can't necessarily afford it. I see a lot of families that have the choice of spending what little money they do have on groceries for an entire meal versus the same amount on a couple of tomatoes at the farmers' market....I get why they don't do it.

There are clear relationships between socioeconomic level and nutrition. It's obvious here, looking at the kind of crap some of these kids eat because it's all their parents can afford. Right now we're growing greens in our school's greenhouse (which is costing an arm and a leg to heat, so I doubt I'll be able to do this next year except during Fall and Spring) and I've got kids that have never wanted to contribute to anything in class excited over watching lettuce grow because they can't wait til the day comes when they can eat it. In the meantime they're asking if we can plant X, Y, and Z too because it's stuff they like (strawberries, peas, etc).

There's a good chance if we go forward with this that we can get some land donated to the cause and probably some materials too. I've got no idea if it would be usable land or if it'll be a parking lot somewhere. In looking around, I'm seeing that most community gardens are built with raised beds. IDEALLY, from what we've been talking about, I think it would be awesome to be able to use the community garden to help get some affordable (read "free") nutrition to families that need it if they want it.

Here's my question: Is that too much wishful thinking? It seems like most of the ones I've seen involve plots "rented out" or "assigned to" individual families to take care of their own thing. I think that would limit the scope of what we could potentially do with this because we'd only be doing something for, say, a dozen families (probably most of which would be my students anyway).

Is there a way to do this sort of thing on a bigger scale? I get why you'd want "assigned" plots per family...I mean if one family or person decides halfway through the year they don't care anymore, only their crop suffers and you don't get one dedicated person stuck doing all of the work for the entire garden. On the other hand, it seems limiting that way.... I dunno.

Sorry for the rambling thoughts...just trying to figure some stuff out.

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Comments (3)

rlewing
10 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Hi, I have been involved with community gardens in three different cities over the past 15 year. While the standard definition of a community garden usually involves separate plots or boxes, it does not have too. A community garden could be one garden that is cared for by members of the community.

Start small and expand as the skills and abilities of the gardeners grow. Anything is doable.
DirtandYarn
10 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Good luck. My community garden has plots that are rented, but there is also a section of beds that have volunteers that grow for donation, but also for low income families that can't afford the rental fee. I think a sense of ownership is important to cultivate, too.
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David, I had going a very long post of recommendation when the electricity went blip and I lost it all...damn. Well, here goes again...start with a "business plan" outlining all the important parts of the project and a timeline for completing steps to completion. Some questions for you to consider: Who is doing the work? The site has to be cleared of trash, the soil tested for heavy metals and toxins, and the garden units laid out and generally prepped with available potable water for garden plots and gardeners. Who are your gardeners? Have you polled the neighbors, local religious and ethnic centers? Will you be charging them for their plots? What are their responsibilities to the garden and to each other? How will you get liability insurance (Your property owner probably won't let you run a community garden without insurance unless you can get the city park's department or public works to sponsor the project). An association with a local agency might give you more for the invested buck. What are your security needs for the garden and the gardeners? Fencing is a minimum. Have you got sponsors to help pay for preparation, layout, tools and other expenses? The garden ought to have sets of simple tools and a safe storage place. Try to interest local houses of worship, ethnic clubs, ethnic grocers, local botanical and garden clubs (check with Brooklyn Botanical Garden and New York Botanic Garden -- the first publishes little gardening books including one I think on community gardens. There are already a large number of community gardens in the NY Metropolitan area for you to visit and talk about your vision. Good luck, hope this helps, Marshall
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RoseyGrower, if you added peat moss you should be doing fine with acid. I do not use any chemical fertilizers, however, some of those can cause an overburden of minerals in the soil that does strange things to plants. When we moved in I had some problems with plants. I found out the last home owner used Miracle Grow on everything for 25 years - the soil had salts and other mineral build ups so we went completely organic. You may have some chlorois. I would call the extension office and ask if chlorosis is a common ailment in your community. If so, a quick addition of chelated iron around the garden will take care of what ails you - and you won't have to worry about it on anything. I don't think your plant looks that bad. Did your plant get frost burned after leafing out? We had that problem here. It has caused some damage to plants including blackened edges of leaves, blackened leaves and some distortion of foliage. GGG
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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!!!
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kmarissa
10 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Okay, I shouldn't even be responding because I have zero experience with community gardening (having been on our local waiting list for three years now!), so take everything I say with a huge grain of salt, but... to echo what rlewing says, I'd recommend that you start small! I'd imagine that, like anything else, a brand new community garden program will have a huge learning curve for everyone involved, as you figure out what does and doesn't work for your school and community. You will probably want to look at the next few years as being a bit of a pilot project and for a while, you will probably have a big list of "lessons learned" after each new season.

Remember, you won't be able to feed the whole community or even the whole school right away, so I'd recommend setting aside (for now) your initial worries about not being able to accommodate the whole community. Arguably, it's better in the long run to slowly and methodologically develop a well-operating program, even if it means that fewer people can participate in the short term.

Sounds like, first off, you'll need to find some land (preferably where you can start small and later expand) and the necessary materials. What about creating a gardening club among your students, to start with? Perhaps they'd be willing to solicit donations of money and materials, while you investigate the property aspect? They might also be able to provide input on whether they'd rather work the whole garden together as a club, and split the produce, or create and assign separate plots to individuals? Then, when the garden is up and running for a few years, perhaps new plots can be created and provided to the community on an individual rental basis, with your garden club volunteers growing additional crops for charity or just generally running the garden? Or plot renters can be either required to donate a certain percentage of their harvest, or asked to voluntarily donate a certain percentage of their harvest (although you'd need a system in place, practically speaking, for them to do so). Or there could be a procedure for waiving rental fees where appropriate. Or the garden club could do an annual fundraising event to fund the garden without the need for rental fees-- there are lots of ways to approach the matter, but I think it will really depend on what works in your community, which is something you'll only be able to learn once the program is up and running--hence my recommendation for an initial "pilot program" for the first year or two.

Just a few ideas--they may or may not be practical in your situation, but I would definitely recommend considering creating a gardening club of interested students so that you have a core group of hopefully dedicated kids who can share the work and have the opportunity for input. Do you have a local 4H club? If so, it might be worth talking with those club leaders to see whether there are any interesting opportunities there. The fact that your county is rural but some growers are using progressive agricultural methods makes me think that there have to be people in the area that would great contacts and may be willing to donate materials or even just time to help get this program off the ground.

I also agree with DirtandYarn that fostering a sense of ownership among the students (or other gardeners) will likely be important, especially to keep people interested and inspired when the initial excitement wears off. Let's face it--cleaning up beds for the winter and turning compost in the summer heat are a lot less fun than picking tomatoes. In my opinion, a program that starts out too big, with too many people who may not currently fully appreciate the work that will be involved, runs the risk of losing steam in the long run. Starting small, on the other hand, allows you to expand to meet demand once you have an established program.

Just my uninformed two cents, in rambling multi-paragraph form! And knock on wood for me that I'll get my own community garden plot next year! Then I might actually have a leg to stand on when I post on this forum. ;)

Community garden idea. Need some experienced insight.

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rlewing

DirtandYarn

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kmarissa

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