We are going to put together a couple of posts for those that might not have a place to garden. You might be interested in it, want to learn it, but are simply limited because you don’t have a place to do it. There’s lots of reasons for it, but it’s not an excuse to not garden!
For today’s post, we’re going to focus on community gardens. You might be surprised to learn that we are active community gardeners. We’ve had community gardens for many years and have been a part of them practically since they started becoming popular. You might not know much about them, and might have some misconceptions, so we’re here to clear that up!
Most community gardens are simply garden plots that you can rent for a given season. It might an in-ground garden or maybe raised beds. Usually you pay a little bit of money for your plot(s) and have to do some community related work for the garden over the season. But, your plot is “yours” and you get to work it, care for it and keep all the produce that you create in your plot.
Some community gardens are more communal in nature. For these kinds of community gardens, you typically share your produce with other gardeners. You also pay for the plot and usually have to do work around the garden. We’d generally say that these kinds of community gardens are far less common to encounter. Some are communally gardened in common spaces, yet others are “your space” that you then share your output with fellow gardeners.
In either case, community gardens are a great way to get started in gardening. In most cases, the ground is well established and so starting the garden is quite easy. You’ll often be exposed to experienced gardeners as well, so there’s tons of opportunity to observe other people’s gardens and learn from what they do. Likewise, there’s opportunity to have conversations with other gardeners, which inevitably leads to an exchange of ideas.
If this sounds interesting, we’d encourage you to get in touch with your local community garden. Your community might even have more than one! In most cases, plot selections happen shortly before the growing season and often work on a first come, first serve type of method. Some community gardens have waitlists since they’re quite popular. Don’t be discouraged by that! There’s a surprising amount of “churn” in community gardens as sometimes people move away or simply realize that gardening just isn’t for them.
So, you might wonder, why do we community garden? Well, one, for the community. We enjoy being around other gardeners and the culture of community gardening as a whole. But, more importantly, because our current homestead is off the water grid. While we do have several home gardens, we just don’t have the water capacity to grow everything we want to grow. That’s an expensive problem to solve and having a community garden solves that problem relatively inexpensively.
