How to start a community garden in your neighborhood?

Starting a community garden is one of the best ways to bring together the children, adults as well as senior citizens of an apartment community. More and more urban community dwellings are taking an active role in turning plain areas of their complex or neighbourhood into community gardens. Community gardens not only help the social build up exercise but also increases the green cover around the urban dwellings making living more nature friendly and relaxing.

Here are some tips that one needs to follow while starting out a community garden project.

Establish a Planning Committee: Before embarking on any community gardening project it is recommended to form a planning committee. The planning committee should work on refining of ideas of various members and setting up a minimum program or common denominator to work on.

The planning committee is like the dedicated body which would be responsible in all decisions pertaining to the community garden including garden design, types of trees and plants, funding and resource programs to construction and other associated garden activities. Planning committee members are advised to make a comprehensive list of what needs to be done in their region in order to start a community garden. Any sponsors including Non government organizations can be brought on board in case of limited finances.

Choose an Appropriate Location: Identification and selection of an appropriate site for the community garden is the second important step. Some of the factors that need to be kept in mind while selecting a site include its physical location and water availability. Any community garden site must receive a minimum of six to seven hours of uninterrupted sunlight.

Run a Background Health Checkup on the Garden: It is important to run a complete background check of the area. The soil from the selected site must be taken as a sample for testing in order to find out the various constituents and nutrients or the lack of the same in the soil. Such an exercise not only helps the members to understand the soil type and quality but is also useful in short listing the best variety of plants of trees that can be grown in the garden. The quality of soil can also have an impact on the overall design of the garden.

Organize and Design the Garden: Depending on the size, location and the overall gardening mission, designing of the community garden is the next apparent step. While this is mainly a cosmetic step, there are some factors to keep in mind. Any community garden must always be well protected from unwanted trespassers or animals. A location for storage of gardening tools needs to be a part of the overall design plan. Shrubs or plant fencing can be used to sub divide the various rows of the garden increase the overall beatification of the community garden.

Go Green: Once all the above factors are taken care of, it is time to go green by implementing the community gardening program. The society members in association with the planning committee must draw a roadmap for the future allowing greater participation from people.