A community garden is not a new concept or technique of harvesting or gardening. Community gardening can be relaxing hobbies and bring little green to your neighborhood, town or city. These community gardens are a great way to get both children and adults involved in beautifying the neighborhood community while working with nature. Community gardens, along with offering many other benefits, add to the diversity to the urban world. Gardens in the urban environment contribute to increasing diversity of land use, activities, cultural traditions, and bio-diversity. Community gardens come in all shapes and sizes.

Community Garden

Community gardens are a fantastic way to get in touch with nature again, particularly in highly urbanized cities.A community garden is a green space cultivated on common land by a group of people. You can grow flowering plants, vegetables, fruits or even trees.Community gardens are supported by a variety of larger organizations such as a particular company, a church group, a band of close friends or even apartment owners association/ RWA in one locality or neighborhood. The benefits of today’s community gardens then pertain to social and physical aspects of the environment.Community gardens offer a deeper ecology within today’s urban environment.

Advantages to Community Garden

When comparing with private gardening or balcony gardening, community garden has number of advantages. Community garden are for those who live in apartment building without a balcony or access to green space, locations completely shaded by large trees, or the soil in the yard is not hospitable to growing edible plants.

Community garden helps beginners to meet experts and learn more about gardening by working with them. Many community gardens are equipped with garden tools such as shovels, rake, wheelbarrows, buckets and watering cans, all of which are available for members of the garden to use. Gardeners can bring extra seeds from their collection for trading with other gardeners. Compost is easy to generate and maintain when many gardeners are contributing to the pile.

Starting a community garden

There are many ways to start a community garden. It is recommended to organize a meeting of interested people in your neighborhood, apartment complex or friends, family, gardening and horticultural societies etc. Following steps can be adopted to organize or start a community garden in your neighborhood.

• Planning Committee: The secret of success in community garden is involvement of one and all members associated with it. Form a planning committee and rules or duties for the members. If the project is meant to benefit a particular group or neighborhood, it is essential that the group be involved in all phases. Make a list of what needs to be done.If your community garden has a budget, keep administration in the hands of several people.

• Land for cultivation: Obtain a land for lease or rent for cultivating of plants in garden. Ensure you choose a land and location that suits best for your community garden. Decide on plot sizes, mark plots clearly with gardener’s names.Include plans for a storage area for tools and other equipment, as well as a compost area.Lay out garden to place flower or shrub beds around the visible perimeter. This helps to promote good will with non-gardening neighbors, passersby, and municipal authorities. Organize volunteer work crews to clean it, gather materials and decide on the design and plot arrangement.

• Organize garden: Set up written rules which gardeners are expected to uphold. Members must decide how many plots are available and how they will be assigned. How will plots be assigned such as plots by family size, by residency, by need, by group– i.e., youth, elderly, etc. Allow space for storing tools, making compost and pathways between plots.

• Communication: Good communication ensures a strong community garden with active participation by all. Include main ideas to consider in management, along with many different ways to carry them out. Have regular meeting and opportunity to meet members each other. Have regular celebrations and gardening show such as flower show, exhibition and sales of seed or plants etc.

• Garden insurance: Garden insurance is a new thing for many insurance carriers and their underwriters are reluctant to cover community gardens. This helps you to cover loss due to theft or other accident in your community garden.

Community garden is growing trend is growing cities and urban areas where people don’t have place to grow their plants or vegetables. Start your community garden in small or medium size that can be operated easily. If your group is new, have several planning meetings to discuss your program and organization. Try out suggestions raised at these meetings and after a few months of operation. Consider creating a special garden just for kids–including them is essential. In order to offer a high quality community garden program, good management techniques are essential. Ground rules help gardeners to know what is expected of them. Angry neighbors and bad gardeners pose problems for a community garden. Choose bye-laws carefully so you have procedures to follow when members fail to keep their plots clean and up to code.

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