P.A. MacLean
RedwoodAge.com

Can you dig it?   Community gardens have sprouted all over. Participants not only supplement their own larders, but share organic produce with food kitchens, restore blighted lots and recycle vegetable waste from grocery stores and restaurants for compost.

At last count there were more than 18,000 community gardens in the US, according to Lexie Stoia of the American Community Garden Association in Columbus, Ohio. The group provides support for people organizing gardens throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Among those drawn to community gardens are people who grew up in rural areas or farms but live in urban areas with no place to grow vegetables, Stoia said. But the reasons for starting a garden seem to be as plentiful as the varieties of fruits, vegetables and flowers they grow.

“We also have horticultural therapy with gardens at hospitals and assisted living centers,” she said. “The beds are raised to waist high so people in wheelchairs can use them.”

Challenges to starting gardens vary from place to place.   In New York City the toughest would be to find a plot of land, Stoia said.   In Columbus, vacant lots are not so hard to find, but finding a group of people to sustain the garden and organize it can be tough.

“Another big issue is water.   If you have land you may not have a water hookup,” she said.   “We recommend people get water barrels or cisterns, or work out a relationship with the city to provide it, or a neighbor who will let you hook up if you pay their water bill.”

In Philadelphia, one of the cities, along with Boston, at the forefront of community gardening movement decades ago, a group called Garden Tenders, in conjunction with the Horticultural Society, helps people start community gardens, according to Sally McCabe, program outreach coordinator.

The city has a couple of dozen garden groups, ranging in size from as small as five members to 100 people with individual plots, she said.

A Boom Among Boomers

The baby boom generation understands the whole food issue and will grow vegetables, McCabe said. “It is food growing as social club,” she said. “I’ve watched the ebb and flow over 30 years. The first generation from a rural area will grow vegetables but their children will not. They want to shed their background.

“The third generation will grow vegetables again,” she said. “The people I am seeing growing vegetables now are at the younger end of the boomer generation.”

She runs a training program that teaches people to start their own community garden.   “We have run about 200 people through classes in the last few years,” she said.

But the city has gone well beyond the traditional concept of vegetable plots. “Here in Philly, the city has put a lot of money into the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative,” she said.   People will stake a claim on a vacant lot, clear out trash, plant grass and trees to make the area more attractive for the neighborhood.

Some programs, such as Plant a Row for the Hungry, which began in Alaska, donates part of the produce to food banks, according to Stoia. Some urban farmers sell community garden produce at local farmers markets.  

In Cleveland expanded to concept of neighborhood gardens to include a program called City Fresh, which allows small organic farmers to deliver produce to city dwellers.