Starting A Community Garden
Get the community involved:
-Talk to your neighbors and get everyone together to develop a plan.
-Have a meeting to make goals and assign specific tasks.
-Make sure that everyone involved is participating and takes responsibility.
Resources:
community garden
city farmer
aggie-horticulture
Find a location:
-Make sure your site gets at least 6 hours of direct sunlight.
-Think about a community center.
-Find a school and an interested teacher.
-Look for a church that wants to participate.
-Get permission to plant in a vacant lot that you’d like to beautify!
Find resources:
-Where will you get seeds, plants, and tools?
Ask community members to contribute and look for a sponsor.
Resources to help you get started:
Nashville Beautification can loan out a tiller, donate rain barrels, a compost container, gloves, and bags.
beautification
Metro Parks can loan shovels and spades as well as help find soil, mulch, and compost.
parks
-How will you build soil?
Consider asking neighbors to drop of leaves in the fall and collect coffee grounds from a local coffee shop for compost. Start a community compost pile!
Composting Resources:
compost
lasagna composting
gardeners
-Where will you get water?
Make sure to establish a reliable source of water along with a schedule of who will water and when.
Think about rain barrels!
2006_howto_rain_barrel
cityofbremerton
rainbarrelguide
Consider investing or getting soaker hoses donated. If you garden a sizeable area, this will save you the time of watering each individual plant.