Lessons Learned in Starting a Community Garden

No doubt there are lessons to be learned from every community gardening project.

Our CYFAR project helped to build three community gardens this past spring, all in very different types of communities. The garden coordinators at each site have had various degrees of success in building infrastructure, tapping  into water, attracting gardeners, running educational programs, finding youth to participate in programs and  forming partnerships, etc.

When asked what were some "lessons-learned" from the past year, the garden coordinators came up with the following:

1. A community garden needs infrastructure and supplies, and sometimes things are way more expensive than you think! Water and its associated infrastructure (the water well/pump in Durham and the price of city water in our 2 rural gardens) ended up being a much larger cost than we ever imagined. Learning to search for and write grants is therefore a necessary skill to get things up and running, and most likely a necessary task to keep things going in the long term. Also, before assigning plots to gardeners, make sure they are clear about what is and is not available at the site so they don't end up dissapointed or discouraged. Giving gardeners a chance to help build the infrastructure can be a great way to encourage community ownership of the garden.
2. "Key" individuals are invaluable to making things happen! The garden leader may have plenty of great ideas, but without other key individuals in the community who are invested and willing to lend a hand when things need to get done, things won't get done. This is especially true in the rural area gardens where there isn't as large of a volunteer base to pull from as there is in more urban areas. In the urban garden large groups of volunteers were recruited more easily from  universities, hospitals, hardware stores and master gardener volunteer programs
3. Wide community support is paramount. Not only is it important to have buy-in to the project from community gardeners, but it's also very important to build wider community support which may surface later in the form of donated money or equipment, manual volunteer labor and advisory board members.
4. Individual plots = more owndership. Although there are many successful community gardens that are communal, we found that individual plots helped to ensure an individuals investment in the garden. Those that had success in their plots were very proud of their garden and many of these people ended up sharing produce with their neighbors.
5. Jump in and learn as you go! Although preplanning and community development activities up front help build community support, some times you just have to jump in and start building with the resources (human and material) that you already have. The phrase "if you build it, they will come" comes to mind - and surprisingly in some cases it has worked! - but not always. You need to be smart about how much interest the project will generate from community members - not everyone after all is extremely excited about the initial idea of digging in the dirt in hot weather to grow their own food. So you may want to start small and limit the physical resources you put into it until you're sure that you can build the interest and support you need to make it successful and sustainable. Solid leadership and a clear vision are essential... but some things you just learn as you go.