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

Hi again Barbra. I see from your list that you are getting lots of annuals. That's very cottagy but where you live your garden could be all year round so I personally would also get into perennials and, as I said, some shrubs. A 'real' cottage garden would be full of a mixture of plants, not just annuals. By their very nature cottage gardens were eclectic and had to be easy care. Permanent plantings will help that. You could also be getting some summer flowering bulbs like Crocosmias and the little Gladiolus nanus cultivars. Crocosmias have run riot around our coasts. They thrive in mild, well drained, sunny ground and there are some lovely ones which are less rampant the the standard 'Montbretia'. Another two bulbs which love the sun and will flower in November are Schizostylus and Nerine bowdenii. Both will take an occasional light freeze. Also there are the Mediterranean herbs, rosemary, lavender, sage, thyme and bay which would be perfectly happy in a seaside location. They can take heat, drought and salt. I am quite excited with this project. The opportunities are endless. Even before you start thinking about 'nautical' featues like drift wood, rope handrails, pebble edgings, boat seats in shelters, etc. I'd love to be doing myself! Here is a link that might be useful: Boat seat

Any one living near the Huntington Gardens be sure to visit the new Childrens Garden. They have a large cement bowl of sand that has a lot of iron ore inside, beach sand has Iron ore. They also have a large magnet to gather it up. Children can play with this by the hour. They have a pebble stream, a fog forest. A TeePee make believe, fake Ravens sitting on the bench, I rainbow tunnel, many other clever things for children to explore. Visit and it will give you some great ideas. I wish I could come and help you with your garden. Use a lot of bushes with texture. Pansy's for color, miniature persimmons, miniature Peaches to be picked. Bean Poles shaped like a TeePee for the beans to climb, and Tomato cages to keep them off the ground, the more you plant up, the more room you will have, peas climb up, Japanese egg plant takes little room, and you can eat them. Stubby carrots are great tiny and grow in poor soil and pots. My children's garden was all in pots set in space on the driveway that wasn't used for other things, miniature tomatoes in 3 gal containers and Luffa sponge in 5 gal. clay pots. A row of pot for herbs, I had a weeping willow bottle brush tree, hummingbirds just loved visiting. Miniature squash, which grows fast in a five gallon glay container, and up a tomato cage, and the old standby a row of radishes with germinates in three days. Have the childen make a scarecrow with your help of course. I started growing food at four and a half. Be sure to tuck in some parsley and rosemary for you. A large tall Sunflower plant, one is plenty and grows tall about (8ft). It will attract birds. Gourds, grow up and make a fine trellis plant for a lath house. Just ideas, Norma

That drought-resistant shrubs and trees in SoCal need undisturbed native soil to establish symbiotic relationships with soil fungi to truly go unwatered for 6 months of the year. Mycorrhizae don't typically need to be bought at a nursery, but all our yards sure need it to be in the soil for plants to do their best through summer/fall. Xeric plants need to get established, then they seem to do best when largely left alone, with not much more than some mulch, compost teas in the rainy season and light pruning to thrive. Masanobu Fukuoka foresaw this in One Straw Revolution (a book as radical in some ways as anything else the 70s had to offer) when he advocated abandoning modern ag methodologies, especially tilling, focusing instead on preserving soil food web ecologies in the topsoil. I doubted it for years, but modern soil science and my experiences sure have made me a believer in it