Community gardens?

StrangeCharmSam

StrangeCharmSam

Well-known member
Does anyone have experience with community gardens? My town has one that has fallen out of use and is overgrown, and I've basically been given the thumbs up from a member of city council to roll up and dig in. I've never had a community garden plot before so I'm not sure how equipped I am to bring one back to life, but I'm not about to let that stop me.

That said lol if anyone has any advice, I am very open to taking it!
 
Thanks! I'm hoping it will be a good way to get involved, drum up interest, and get to know people. I don't know how big the whole garden is yet or what kind of infrastructure is already in place, but I'll find out in a couple of weeks when I'm getting started!
 
Thank you! I'll take some before pics as soon as I get there, and will show off the after ones when I get that far. 😂 And I think it would only feel like something came along and stole all my hard work if I were just doing it for my sake? I'm excited to have somewhere to grow food I want to eat, for sure, but I'm also excited to help my community. And if someone's going to the trouble of taking it, maybe they need it more than I do. 🤷‍♀️
 
We have several in our area. I finally got a plot a couple of years ago after getting on the wait list during covid. It was a plot that someone hadn't maintained and it was a lot of work getting it into 'compliance.' It's a lot of work fighting back even a year's worth of unchecked growth. If your plot neighbors aren't vigilant it will quickly become your problem too. It sounds like you have the opportunity to start from scratch so that might be beneficial if you can set the tone from the get go.

I put 10 fig trees in ground and they grew really well for the most part. I did have a lot of problems with theives (2 and 4 legged varieties). One year someone stole T posts that were actively supporting tomato plants. Spray painting them hot pink seemed to have stopped that though. Deer ate the tips of just about everything another year. Two more feet of fence at least helped encourage them to eat elsewhere. Winter killed all my trees to the ground another year. It seemed like I was always fighting something but it was enjoyable overall.

They are also rather strict here in how everything has to be done and the price kept going up. The new rules indicated that you couldn't have anything covering the ground, even permeable landscape fabric. Combine that with 'must be weed free year round' and it was becoming too much of a chore since I had to be out there pulling up weeds every 3 weeks or get an angry letter.

They can be fun and you will meet some good people. If life (kids) didn't need my time elsewhere at the moment I probably would've kept it going.

Good luck!
 
Oh, that's really helpful information, thank you! Yeah it sounds like the person who ran the organization that pushed to create it and got it through city council and was running it for a few years moved overseas and the new folks who took over the org pivoted in a very different direction. So it's basically a free game community garden with no one making use of it. I'm hoping that means like you said, I can have a lot of influence on how it's organized and what kind of policies exist for it. The city lol seemed pretty much like oh you're interested? Have at it! So 😂😂😂 I plan to.
 
That's a lot of opportunity! See if you can get some chipdrops over there. I found that putting in a foot of wood chips will knock back a whole lot and just make everything easier down the road.

Ours was so rules based it almost made it feel impersonal at times. Then again there was a good bit of tragedy of the commons type stuff baked into the rules and the emails suggested that there were more than a handful of less than stellar stewards of the property. It was really cool seeing what some people were able to do with a 20x30 plot though.

Keep us updated!
 
Back in Socal, the community gardens near me all have different rules, wait time, crop restrictions, lot size, sunlight conditions. Water bills were the main concern at the time because water is expensive in CA. I visited and talked to each garden management before deciding.

For me, I need a place that is close to home so I can visit often. Rule wise, it comes down to enforcement. Most have a long list of rules but lack enforcement. You also need to get a vibe on the ground before deciding whether to lease a plot. E.g. one place had some small sheds to host chickens - the fighting kind. They can be your ally. Crop loss from pass by and critters is a fact of life. You can use netting and fence to make it difficult if that is allowed.
 
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