Category — Community Gardens

“The community was ready for a garden like this. It was just the right idea at the right time.”

By Michelle Pak,
NRCS Idaho
January 23, 2012

Excerpt:

Eric Moore had a vision to grow a garden outside his office window. Moore, an employee of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service in Idaho, works at the USDA Service Center in Gooding.

For years, the back part of the Service Center property was vacant and covered in weeds. Looking at that weed patch always bothered Moore. So he was excited when he got permission from the landlord to start a garden there last year.

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“Lots of Green” Youngstown, Ohio.

“People are starting to see land reuse as a new approach to neighborhood revitalization in post-industrial cities,”

By Lee Chilcote
Hive City Media
January 15, 2012

Excerpt:

Since Lots of Green launched in the summer of 2010, the program has reclaimed more than 150 urban lots (about 17 acres of city land). Some completed projects include community gardens, side yard expansions, pocket parks, a storm water mitigation demonstration site, a block-long soil research site and a 2.5 acre urban farm.

“We now have five community gardens with over 100 registered gardeners,” Presley says. “We’re igniting innovative projects and empowering residents to get involved.”

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Helps to Feed 200,000 People Every Month

By John Cueler
growingyourgreens
Jan 6, 2012

From Irvine Wiki:

The Incredible Edible Park a 7.5 acre community garden in Irvine and is located at 15058 Harvard Ave Irvine, CA, next to the meeting of Harvard Avenue and the Walnut Trail and Metrolink. Southern California Edison has an easement on the land and after years of being empty and overgrown with weeds it was decided to transform the area into a park.

The Incredible Edible Park is one of the last vestiges of agriculture in Irvine and features beans, broccoli, carrots, lettuce, oranges, potatoes and squash just to name a few. The crops grown and maintained by the community six days a week and up to 1,2000 volunteers a year. It is subsequently donated to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County to help feed thousands of hungry families.

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The most expensive place in the country to rent an allotment is Runnymede, in Berkshire, which has increased rents from 34p a square metre in 2008 to 55p in 2011.

Royal Horticultural Society
19 December 2011

Excerpt:

Allotment rents fluctuate wildly across the country, with plot holders in Surrey paying more than 50 times as much for their plot as those in Derbyshire, according to a survey of allotment provision carried out by the University of Leicester.

Researchers found rents have gone up by an average of 21% in the last three years, and confirmed that allotment waiting lists remain high, at 86,787, although this is a drop from the previous figure of 94,124 in 2010.

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Contents – Instructions, cress seeds and waterproof tray
Materials – FSC Paperboard and APET tray

Escape to your allotment without ever leaving your desk and harvest your own crop in a matter of weeks (no wellies required!). Gardening is great for the soul and tending your own tiny patch will be rewarding and therapeutic.

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See larger format of the film here.

4o minute film

Director/Producer: Ella von der Haide
Produced in 2006 – Germany

Synopsis:

Community gardens are widespread in South Africa. Traditional methods and innovative technologies are being used to grow organic food and create communities. The community gardens are places of hope, solidarity, and sometimes of active resistance against official neo-liberal politics. The four examples from the film show three outstanding projects: Women Peace Garden in the Cape Flats,

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By Patricia A. Carney, Janet L. Hamada, Rebecca Rdesinski, Lorena Sprager, Katelyn R. Nichols, Betty Y. Liu, Joel Pelayo, Maria Antonia Sanchez and Jacklien Shannon
Journal of Community Health
Published online Dec 23, 2011

Abstract

This community-based participatory research project used popular education techniques to support and educate Hispanic farmworker families in planting and maintaining organic gardens. Measures included a pre- post gardening survey, key informant interviews and observations made at community-based gardening meetings to assess food security, safety and family relationships. Thirty-eight families enrolled in the study during the pre-garden time period, and four more families enrolled in the study during the post-garden period, for a total of 42 families enrolled in the 2009 gardening season. Of the families enrolled during the pre-gardening time period there were 163 household members. The mean age of the interviewee was 44.0, ranging from 21 to 78 years of age.

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Battery Park City’s Liberty Community Garden is planted next to West Street, an eight-lane highway. Downtown Express photo by Terese Loeb Kreuzer.

Gardeners from Seattle, Wash. made compost from a million flowers that had been left at a vigil for those who died on 9/11 and transported the compost to Battery Park City

By Terese Loeb Kreuzer
Downtown Express
June 15, 2011|

Excerpt:

Luck was not always on the side of the gardeners, however. After the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, the garden, which was then south of its present site, was knee-deep in debris. A newspaper account of that time quoted McCormack as saying, “I came out to look at my garden and everything was coated with three to four inches of gray dust.”

The plots closest to the World Trade Center were completely destroyed. A more southerly section was salvaged. Gardeners from the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy removed ash from the plants by hand.

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Block of 97 houses on the block surrounded by Hurst Street, Bullingdon Road, St Mary’s Road and Leopold Street.

“If everyone is responsible for the same communal space, it makes everyone feel safe and we can inspire and encourage each other to take steps towards more sustainable living.”

By Liam Sloan
The Oxford Times
30th November 2011

Excerpt:

Neighbours in East Oxford are being urged to tear down their fences and join their back gardens together to create a communal park.

Six people have been working with Green city councillor Matt Morton to draw up a masterplan for the block of 97 houses on the block surrounded by Hurst Street, Bullingdon Road, St Mary’s Road and Leopold Street.

They believe that if neighbours pool their land to create a single growing area, it could provide fruit, vegetables, eggs, and honey for every household.

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Farming Concrete NYC Informational Video from Valerie & Schenkman on Vimeo.

2010 data from NYC, 67 community gardens, 1.7 acres, 87,700 pounds of fresh produce, worth more than $200,000

Open Space Newsletter
Sept 23, 2011

Excerpt:

In 2010, a team of volunteers from Farming Concrete traveled to community gardens around the city, conducting outreach and recruiting city gardeners to participate in the study. Over the summer and fall growing seasons, 110 gardeners weighed all of their produce, mapped their garden beds and counted the total numbers of the crops that they planted. After analyzing the results, Farming Concrete found that in the 67 community gardens from which data was gathered, which make up a total area of just 1.7 acres, 87,700 pounds of fresh produce was grown and worth more than $200,000.

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The allotment holders of Corfe Castle in Dorset. Photo by BNPS.

Allotments listed on Landshare

Landshare
2nd September 2011

Excerpt:

Over 20 National Trust properties are now running allotments or community gardens or orchards on their sites, many of which are stunning historic properties with incredible views as well as great growing soil. At Kingston Lacy in Dorset a set of 118 new allotments have been established. There are 40 allotments for members of the local community; 26 for school and community groups and a further 52 subsidised plots for individuals referred through local housing associations.

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Community residents distribute the fruit of their labour at the Firgrove Crescent public housing development. Photo by David Trattles.

“Our main focus was to make sure that food was accessible to our community at reasonable prices.”

By Clifton Joseph
with photography by David Trattles
Canadian Geographic
Oct 2011

Excerpt:

Jamaican-born single mother Janet Young and her teenage daughter Andrene are working opposite ends of their plot. Andrene has gloves on and is pulling out weeds from around the tomatoes, while Janet is disentangling big leafy green vines from some of the other plants. “Steups!” she hisses, kissing her teeth. “I gotta tell you, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s never plant the zucchini next to the callaloo or the peppers, because it takes so much space that it overpowers anything else that’s too close to it. You’ve got to give the zucchini space!

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The Bronx currently has about 175 community gardens administered by Operation Green Thumb, as well as a number of community gardens operated by nonprofit entities, such as the Parks Council, and community gardens on private property.

By Michelle M. Althaus Ottman, Dr. Juliana A. Maantay, Kristen Grady, Nério Cardoso, and Nilce Nazareno da Fonte
Cities Environ.
2010 March 5

Excerpt:

Results: For the Community Gardens that have been visited so far in the Bronx (n=19): 53% of them grow predominantly vegetables, 32% cultivate mainly flowers, 11% grow flowers and vegetables in approximately the same amounts, and 5% have mostly trees in the garden. Just two of the 19 Community Gardens visited sell their produce in farmers markets located in the community. Most of the 32 gardeners interviewed (62%) share out less than half of their harvest, and 31% of the interviewed gardeners shared more than half.

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Montreal community garden. Photo by Andreas Sundgren.

They announced they had amassed 25,000 signatures

By Monique Beaudin,
Montreal Gazette Environment Reporter
November 15, 2011

MONTREAL – A coalition of 50 organizations has made history in Montreal by collecting the required 15,000 signatures on a petition to force the city to hold public hearings on the state of urban agriculture here.

Members of environmental, gardening and social groups spent the last three months gathering the signatures from Montreal residents. On Tuesday, they announced they had amassed 25,000 signatures.

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Calgary appears to be rediscovering its gardening roots. Three years ago there were only a dozen community gardens in the city. Now, driven by grassroots gardeners in the downtown core, the inner city, and even in the ‘burbs, residents are getting their “grow” on at more than 100 community gardens.

Tuscany’s first plot made into gathering place

By Tony Seskus
Calgary Herald
October 12, 2011

Excerpt:

It’s part of a blossoming trend. In 2008, there were 11 public and private community gardens in the city.

By last May, there were more than 100 – a surge driven by residents at the grassroots. Now, gardens can be found throughout Calgary, in the core, inner city or the ‘burbs.

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People’s Garden coordinator Vilma Aquino, right, gets down in the plants with Betty Frank Senior Lunch Program volunteer Cynthia Owens as the two harvest greens for the lunch program recently. Photo by Mike Jory/Times Herald.

By Irma Widjojo
Times Herald
10/02/2011

Excerpt:

With three Vallejo areas deemed food deserts, a child obesity rate of 32.8 percent, and an abundance of vacant lots, many Vallejoans agree that the city needs healthful food options.

A few residents have chosen community gardens to kill two birds with one stone: Use the vacant lots productively and produce healthier food for the community. However, the city of Vallejo has no ordinances for such ventures, a fact that has proven problematic.

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Khadija Musame, above right, with a customer from Somalia at the New Roots Farm stand in San Diego. Photo by Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times.

One can hear 15 different languages there, amid the neat rows of kale, rape and banana plants — but body language is the lingua franca.

By Patricia Leigh Brown
New York Times
October 9, 2011

Excerpt:

Among the regular customers at the New Roots farm stand are Congolese women in flowing dresses, Somali Muslims in headscarves, Latino men wearing broad-brimmed hats and Burundian mothers in brightly patterned textiles who walk home balancing boxes of produce on their heads.

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Visions of Thanksgiving: Tilling a garden in inner-city Prince George this summer. Photo: Justin Foster.

Turning empty lots into inner-city veggie patches yields a harvest of goodwill in Prince George, British Columba

By Josh Massey
TheTyee.ca
Oct 10, 2011

Excerpt:

“We can grow lots right here in Prince George, while some species do better in other communities like Quesnel. I imagine a bartering system where we are exchanging produce between communities.”

One section of the Growing Community Gardens is dedicated to testing different strains of kale to see which fair best in the colder climate.

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Alfred Lincoln, a immigrant from Liberia, Africa, works on his plot at the Grassroots Community Farm, an urban farm for refugees and immigrants located near Lafayette Square Mall.(Photo/Jessica Williams-Gibson)

“I don’t want to give up on this project just because of the thefts,” Beltran-Figueroa said.

Indianapolis (WlS)
The Associated Press
10/7/11

Excerpt:

However, some larger community plots like Grassroots’ have seen their peppers purloined and are wondering how to stop it.

“Thefts and vandalism are huge,” declared Kay Crimm of Grow Me gardens. Last year, her group had a three-acre site near 46th Street and Arlington Avenue. It was plundered so badly that the gardeners left the site and moved to a plot at 46th Street and Post Road, she said, but it has “been ripped up, too.”

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Nancy Hall, left, and Iwana Wagner work in the community garden at the Mansfield Area Y. Photos by Jolee Hill.

By Anne Miller
Mansfield News Journal
Oct 4, 2011

Excerpt:

It’s part of a national effort to provide green space in urban areas allowing residents to grow their own food or donate what they have grown.

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