Community Gardens

Physical spaces, including community gardens, can often, without intention, exclude members of the population. Through promoting the principles of Universal Design this guide is intended to offer gardeners assistance on how to make their gardens more accessible for people of all ages and abilities.

Fact sheet outlines the research showing that community gardens at schools can boost health and academic achievement.

Thorough guide emphasizing practical information beginners or veteran gardeners alike can use to help make their community garden a success. This publication is not an academic study—it purposely focuses on specific, practical, and applicable suggestions to create successful solutions for any community garden’s needs.

Application for temporary use of fire hydrants for water at community gardens in Chicago.

This comprehensive guide provides a road map for how local laws and policies can impact local gardening efforts. It also addresses practical issues such as how to find and evaluate potential garden sites, design and manage gardens, and handle liability issues.

This guide is intended to be a resource for gardeners, garden organizers, Extension staff, and other agency professionals who want to start a new community garden, enhance an existing garden or help community members start and manage their own community garden.

The toolkit includes general steps for starting a community garden or school garden, a “Identifying Neighborhood Resources” exercise for identifying community resources, and garden site evaluation checklist. While this toolkit includes some materials related to starting a garden and assessing possible sites, most this toolkit focuses on keeping a garden going.

This guide links to resources that: help people successfully start and manage community gardens; inform governments on how they can encourage gardens; and guide organizations on permanently protecting gardens. (Print version of ConservationTools.org guide)

Barriers, such as liability expenses, code restrictions, and a lack of resources, which often make it difficult for communities to establish or maintain gardens in their neighborhoods, can be overcome with local government engagement. This fact sheet offers case studies, best management practices, resources and tools for policy-makers regarding creative, cost-effective solutions that reduce barriers and facilitate the creation of community garden programs.

Local government leaders are in a unique position to promote healthy eating and active living in their communities by supporting community gardens. Community gardens can improve nutrition, physical activity, community engagement, safety, and economic vitality for a neighborhood and its residents and provide environmental benefits to the community at large. Planning for Healthy Places, a project of Public Health Law and Policy, has created a set of complementary model land use policies to help communities create and preserve community gardens. Document includes a model general plan as well as model zoning ordinances.

This toolkit was developed to provide legal resources for establishing community gardens on vacant or underutilized parcels of land. It includes a model community garden lease, a model gardener's agreement, and model garden rules. The toolkit describes the rights and responsibilities of the landowner, the sponsoring organization, and gardeners in an accessible way. It also provides options for tailoring the documents to meet the circumstances of different gardens.

Study finds that community garden programs provide opportunities for constructive activities, contributions to the community, relationship and interpersonal skill development, informal social control, exploring cognitive and behavioral competence, and improved nutrition.

Guide explains different types of community gardens and the steps necessary to start and effectively maintain a garden. Appendix includes sample bylaws, budget worksheet, and gardener application.

Fact sheet highlights the numerous studies demonstrating the positive impact of community gardens on health, property values, municipal budgets, food security, carbon emissions, and crime rates.

Explores the benefits of community gardens, the threats facing them in New York City in the early 2000s, and how gardeners and conservation groups worked together to preserve many of the gardens.

A template for creating written materials that explain how your community garden operates and how gardeners can be involved. The information contained in the packet was gleaned from the experiences of various community gardening organizations and community gardeners from around the country. It is intended to be a tool for organizing your garden;introducing new gardeners to the policies, procedures and people that keep the garden running smoothly;and keeping returning gardeners updated and involved. It is also intended to help gardeners find a clear and easy way to play an active role in the garden’s management and upkeep.

Sample forms to help manage community gardens. Forms include: garden plot registration and fee scale, garden contract, garden rules and regulations, land-use agreement, and form for release of all claims.

Sample community garden agreement from Southborough Community Gardens in Massachusetts. Outlines the rules of the garden and includes area for gardener signature.

Five-year license for operating community garden plots on municipal property in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Study finds that the opening of a community garden has a statistically significant positive impact on residential properties within 1,000 feet of the garden, and that the impact increases over time. It finds that gardens have the greatest impact in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Higher quality gardens have the greatest positive impact. Finally, it finds that the opening of a garden is associated with other changes in the neighborhood, such as increasing rates of home ownership, and thus may be serving as catalysts for economic redevelopment of the community.

Sample registration and regulations for Wheaton Farm Community Garden.