How to Start a Community Garden – 5 Top Tips
You’ve looked around and can’t find a community garden in your area but are keen to get involved… what next? If you’re wondering how to start a community garden yourself, here’s five top tips.
As with any new project, enthusiasm and commitment is the key. If you have those, and really want to achieve something, then nothing is impossible.
How to Start a Community Garden – 5 Top Tips
1. Who Will Use the Community Garden?
It’s important to think about what you want from the garden, who will be using it? Will it be the active retirement group, young people, the community as a whole or individual groups? Often groups find the funding for a polytunnel and some equipment, try to recruit some individuals to come along and garden, and stall because they have no real plan for it.
2. What’s Your Vision
Play around with some ideas until you have a vision or a goal for your community garden. It may change along the way but at least you’ll have something to talk to others about and ideally fire up their enthusiasm too. Once you’re recruited some fellow community gardeners, you can explore your aims and vision further.
3. Recruit Gardeners
Then you need to recruit some fellow gardeners to help you make your vision a reality.
In Ireland Pride of Place and Tidy Towns competitions are becoming more popular and the individuals working to help their communities look their best often have contacts, resources, and/or knowledge about funding/land that should not be overlooked.
Local County Council’s usually know who the committee members are and would be a good point of contact if you’re unsure. Local volunteer centres might have people on their books too, looking for some outdoor work and friendships.
Community gardens don’t just need gardeners, you’re forming a club of likeminded people. Try to encourage folk who are good with money, funding applications, artists, cooks or social media/PR. All of those skills will help to ensure your project is a success.
Consider sharing the space with other groups. A large polytunnel in a community would be a major asset for Tidy Towns groups who might like to start seedlings off for their planting schemes to ensure their villages, towns and cities are full of flowers, at a much lower cost than having to buy them all in. Scout groups, schools or creches might love a bed or two to develop their growing skills.
Parish churches may have enthusiastic helpers and/or land so may be worth considering too and from my experience, Family Resource Centres are always willing to help community groups. You could also advertise in a local newspaper (they may run a short story which will cost nothing) or place posters up in shop windows.
4. Find Some Land
Once you have fellow enthusiastic volunteers the land usually follows. It may be an old scrap of land that’s often used for fly tipping, an unsightly area that’s been overlooked, a patch of grass in the middle of a housing estate, or local authority land. In just a few months you can guarantee that it will be transformed.
Find out who owns the land, approach them and try and come to an agreement. It’s really worth discussing a lease agreement to protect the landowner and the community gardeners. Community Gardens Ireland have a template agreement here.
5. Look for Help
It helps to get an ‘expert’ in to help get you started. Inviting a qualified horticulturalist to come along and help you set up or give a series of gardening classes is invaluable and these can often be found on Educational Training Board tutor lists.
The important thing is, try not to give up if things aren’t moving as quickly as you’d like, or you’re struggling to find people or land. It may take a while to get going, but once you have a community garden, you won’t regret it.
If you’d like more information on community gardening in Ireland or Northern Ireland, please see the Community Garden Ireland website for details of groups that may be near you, or for regional reps who will be pleased to help you find one.
