Community Gardens

I have been asked to be a member of a committee to put together a training course on how to set up a community garden. The area that we are concentrating on is the City of Detroit and Wayne County, Michigan.

There are many low income people who would like to have a garden but either do not have the space, funds or both.The produce they could grow would mean alot to them

We will teach them how to secure property, soil testing, how to obtain seeds, plants and garden tools etc.

We are operating under a grant from the US Department of Agriculture. The committee consists of Michigan State University Extension Service, Master Gardeners (Me) and several other community groups that are focused on Urban Argilculture.

If any of you have experience in Community Gardening please contact me if you have any experiences, advice or other information to share.

Thanks.

Paul

Nothing to share except that it's a wonderful idea. I know many cities have done it successfully.

Paul where are they going to put them I've always wondered why they hadn't done something like that on the east side where the roits burned all of that land must be a section or more with nothing on it and dw said that there was a lot of open ground on the west side from 1St out to about to 18th now that was still housing when we left in the early 70"s

Dave, thats one of the issues we are going to train the people on. There are many vacant lots and adandoned houses in the inner city. We will tell them where to go and whom to contact in order to get ownership of those lots. Many are owned by the county for back taxes and can be bought for $1 to use as community gardens.

Paul

Paul - some helpful links:

http://ag.arizona.edu/maricopa/garden/html/youth/mirgdold.htm

http://heifer.org

http://www.grass-roots.org/usa/chheifer.shtml

Heifer is extremely help in helping provide information and hooking people up to provide additional training and resources. Extremely trust-worthy organization.

God Bless you in your efforts - keep us updated please!

Paul,
Back in the late 70's to the mid-80's we had a community garden in Traverse City. It was huge and totally amazing! Totally organic. Not only veggies, but flowers, too. It was such a wonderful thing. Very beautiful and a real souce of community pride. It was a totally new idea "way back then"!. It brought people together and helped create friendships and respect.
I have since married and moved to Benzie County, where there is another wonderful, successful community garden. Although I don't participate, I do support it. I can tell you that a lot of the effort here is donated by a local alternative school. The kids LOVE it. They plant, weed, and harvest and most of the produce is donated to the local food pantry. They feel such pride and awe in knowing that they have contributed to not only the success of a beautiful garden, but to the effort that will help others survive. They feel needed, useful and appreciated, as they should! They feel they are contributing to something very important and much bigger than they are....
What else would you like to know? It seems like for you, the biggest obstacle may be finding a place for a garden....I would encourage you to do all you can to make this a successful endeavor. When people come together to garden, they not only grow food, they grow a caring, strong, loving community as well.

Paul, here is a link to the American Community Garden Association where you may find some helpful information:
http://www.communitygarden.org/index.php
http://www.communitygarden.org/starting.php

Here is a link to the thread requesting a community garden forum, with some ideas and experiences listed on it. I will paste some of the comments on to some new threads by topic.
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/653522/


This message was edited Oct 19, 2006 10:39 AM

Hi Paul,
You probably already know about this (it may even be the group you're involved with), but the Detroit Agriculture Network offers a training program similar to what you seem to be talking about called Urban Roots. You can get contact info from their website, www.detroitagriculture.org. If you're not already familiar with them, they may have lots of resources you can use from this program. They are also affiliated with the MSU Extension Office, Greening of Detroit, Earthworks Garden, & others. Their program is a 9 week program starting in February.

I was part of the group that established Urban Roots.

It has been very sucessfull.

Thanks

Paul

I was checking out the Home Depot website and they have a community gardens project in partnership with Evergreen. Money and volunteers are available. Worth a look.

I'm promoting guerrilla gardening in our community here in Ottawa, Canada. Just starting, so no experience to report on yet.

Good for you, Andy!!

Andycdn,

I am working with a community garden and would like to find the info for Home Depot. I looked at their website and did a google search, but can't find it. Can you post the link?

Thanks.

Here's the link to the site in Canada where I got the information I referred to above. The US site is probably similar.

http://www.homedepot.ca/communityaffairs/content/en_CA/CAWeBuild.html

Have a look...

I need some help over here: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/713849/. Can you read my post and make comments if you have time.

Thanks,
Jody

Paul,

You might like to see the new book Community Gardening, available from Brooklyn Botanic Garden, www.bbg.org

Good luck with your program. Community gardening is a wonderful way to meet people and share in growing plants, food, flowers, etc. I agree that the American Community Gardening Assn. has some great resources, including tip sheets on how to start a garden.

I've been involved with community gardens for a long time. Have photos on my blogs:

GardenCoachingWS.blogspot.com Garden Coaching Service for Winston-Salem, NC
psumcearthgarden.blogspot.com Schaef Earth Garden, Brooklyn, New York
kirbyplant.blogspot.com How I Love to Garden


Here's a photo of two guys in their beautiful community garden in Brooklyn.



Ellen

Thank you Ellen

We applied for a grant from Evergreen. Just got in before the deadline. Maybe they have another grant date later on in the summer. We will know how much - if anything - by 05 June.
Ginny