How To Organize A Community Garden

The best time to plan for a Spring garden is in the heart of Winter. If you’ve think you might like to organize a community garden plot, a little prep work in January will aid your success when you are ready to sew the first seeds.

Community gardens provide healthy vegetables and herbs and they create a friendly place of beauty for neighbors to gather and work together. So, how do you organize a community garden?

Sow Seeds of Interest

Solitary gardening is easy, but organizing your community to garden together is a bit trickier. First, you must ascertain if people in your community are interested in starting a community garden.

Create a community garden group for people to join if they are interested. Advertise in the community paper and on school and library bulletin boards. Pass out fliers in your neighborhood to get others excited about the community garden.

You can create a group on Facebook to make it easy for everyone to chat. Or host a garden club meeting in your home or at the local library where everyone can meet in person.

Map Out Your Garden

Once you have attracted an interested group, discuss what type of community garden you will have.

Some members enjoy making edible flower gardens with pretty shade trees to sit under, and colorful blossoms to sniff or pick. Others might like a community vegetable garden where amateur farmers can grow tasty crops to share. You can even combine the two – flower and vegetable gardening – in the same plot.

The decision depends on personal tastes and how much land you have to use.

Share The Bounty

After determining which type of community garden to create, allocate jobs. Different people are often better suited for different tasks. Try to organize the jobs in the community garden based both on preferences and suitability.

Some of these community garden tasks may include: mowing, digging, preparing soil, transporting plants, building a path, weeding, and watering. For example, one member may be great at planting seeds, while another is better at picking up young trees at the nursery.

If you are having a divided community garden, each person or family will have an allotted space to do whatever they want with. This can be a good way of organizing the community garden if you do not want to establish leadership roles.

Set Your Boundaries

There still must be some sort of rules, however, when you organize a community garden. Garden plots must be maintained, and nothing dangerous or invasive can be planted.

Rules should be agreed upon by all parties planting in the community garden. Having everyone sign a rule sheet or agreement is a good idea to ensure everyone fully understands the expectations.

Organizing a community garden can bring beauty, fresh food, and camaraderie into your neighborhood. As long as roles and rules are clearly stated, the community garden will grow friendship and joy as you nourish the plants and flowers.