PINETREE GARDEN SEEDS GUIDE TO STARTING A COMMUNITY GARDEN
We are Rooting For You: How to Start Your Own Community Garden in Six Simple Steps
Pinetree Garden Seeds is one of the few seed and garden suppliers to sell non-GMO hybrid, organic and heirloom seeds in people-sized portions at affordable prices. As our customers are more likely to be home gardeners than big farmers, we have become a trusted resource for community gardeners nationwide. We believe in the power of community gardens and we are so proud to support them! Season by season, we have seen how planting, tending, and harvesting together nourishes neighborhoods and organizations. If you want to feed your family, friends, and sense of community, our guide to community gardening will get you growing—together.
Did you know that families with a community gardener eat 1.5 times more fruits and vegetables and are 3.5 times more likely to meet their recommended daily allowance of fresh produce? Or that community gardeners eat even more fruits and vegetables than home gardeners? Research has shown community gardens also raise property values, reduce food insecurity, encourage children to eat a wider variety of healthy foods, and create community connections that lead to positive social change.
Americans discovered the power of community gardens in the 19th century, when Detroit funded a citywide initiative to turn vacant lots into garden plots for unemployed workers during the recession of 1893. This program was so successful that San Francisco, Boston, and Philadelphia founded their own community garden programs while reformers like Fannie Griscom Parsons sparked the school garden movement to give the children in economically depressed areas a chance to spend time in fresh air while helping to feed their families.
Here in our home state of Maine, community gardens help recent immigrants put down roots in a new community and contribute to their local economy. They help churches stock their food pantries. They support environmentally friendly disposal of organic wastes through composting. They help schoolchildren learn about biology, ecology, and nutrition. And they help families spread out the cost and share the work of growing good, delicious, healthy food. Our growing season may be short up north but spending the long summer days in the garden together makes it all the sweeter.
At Pinetree Garden Seeds, we believe every community should have a garden at its heart. So how do you start your own?
Pinetree Garden Seeds supports local nonprofit community gardens through seed and seedling donations every single year.Submit your Seed Donation Request through our website for your community garden today.
Look around you. Is there a vacant, weedy lot nearby? An unused portion of a park or empty school or church fields? Is there a home you know of with expansive property they aren’t cultivating? You may already have a site in mind or you may need to ask your city or town about potential locations.
An ideal community garden location will have:
To get it ready, you will need to form work crews and:
Congratulations—you’ve just made your neighborhood greener, healthier, and stronger. Keep us posted on the progress of your community garden!
I recently discovered your company and ordered all my seeds from you this year. Many of those seeds are now growing at the community garden of the MacCanon Brown Homeless Sanctuary in Milwaukee’s inner city. This fledgling garden is in a food desert and was designed to also mitigate the effects of lead poisoning, which is rampant in the area due to old water laterals.
Thank you for being part of the healthy solution for this community!
Thanks for the kind words, Pinetree! I hope you (or your blogger) is directly involved in a community garden her/himself. Yes, there’s a place for your Pinetree’s quality seed – veggies and flowers both, since community gardens are tools for neighborhood beautification and ecology as well as cultivating community and growing delicious food. Community gardens give everyone access to a place to garden, something essential in this age of apartments. As a veteran community gardener, I like many of your suggestions – most of all, putting the ‘people part’ first. And, very true, you don’t necessarily have to build planter boxes (“raised beds”.) May I suggest two additional points:
If you are interested in community gardening (or any gardening), it’s a long-haul proposition. Worth it! But not instant. Typically, experience shows that starting a sustainable community garden takes at least six months and more often a year of planning, soil preparation, etc, from the moment of vision to opening the garden. So, plan to be planning and organizing even during that cold Maine winter (that’s good for gardeners anyway, right – and we can read catalogs and visit seed websites, too.) From the start, you’ll be cultivating people with the goal of sustainability. Your key question is not “how cool does the garden look on opening day?”, it’s “will our garden be thriving a decade from now as a true community resource and asset, keeping a place for growing food available even in the city?”
Second, community gardeners, we are not alone. There are active support groups right across your border in Vermont, in North Carolina, and in progressive cities across the US and other countries. Join one (or more!) Our national group, The American Community Gardening Association (www.communitygarden.org) is especially valuable as a way to network. Nothing beats speaking to folks with experience! There are some excellent guides as well. I’m partial to North Carolina’s, from their Cooperative Extension program, named “Collard Greens and Common Ground” (https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/collard-greens-and-common-ground-a-north-carolina-community-food-gardening-handbook) which is available free online. It’s balanced and reasonably complete.
Thanks again Pinetree, and thanks for your grant program – our garden might just apply! Have a good summer.
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Gary Lukens
July 19, 2019
The Ocean Park Community Garden, in Ocean Park, Wa., is under construction & will open in April 2020. Input & ideas are welcome.