Preparing Your Community Garden Site

Part 2: Community Gardening

The community garden concept is growing and more and more people are looking for ways they can be a part of it. In my first article, I discussed what a community garden is and how to get one started in your community. This article will focus in on how to prepare your community garden site and organize your group.

Once you have identified the piece of land you would like to use for your community garden, there are a number of things that have to happen. This requires planning and patience. To start your preplanning process, sit down and identify all that needs to be written out before you begin. Questions to ask yourself include:

• How large should individual plots be (or should there be several sizes based on family size or other factors?
• Will there be conditions for membership (residence, dues, agreement with rules)?
• How will plots be assigned (by family size, by residency, by need, by group-- i.e., youth, elderly, etc.)?
• How should the plots be laid out?
• If the group charges dues, how will the money be used? What services, if any, will be provided to gardeners in return?
• Will the group be required to do certain things cooperatively (such as turning in soil in the spring, planting cover crops, or composting)?
• When someone leaves a plot, how will the next tenant be chosen?
• How will the group deal with possible vandalism?
• Will there be a children's plot?
• Will the gardeners meet regularly? If so, how often and for what purposes?
• Will gardeners share tools, hoses, and other such items?
• How will minimum maintenance (especially weeding) be handled both inside plots and in common areas (such as along fences, in flower beds, and in sitting areas)?
• Will there be a set of written rules which gardeners are expected to uphold? If so, how will they be enforced?
• Should your group incorporate and consider eventually owning your garden site?

Once these rules are created, the next step is to do a site analysis, or site survey. This will help you make the best decisions regarding features like soil composition, shade, and water. If you want to add features in your garden, this is important to identify before you begin. Creating a series of site maps will help you start designing it, and will also serve as a record of how your garden has changed over time. In evaluating your site, take all of the following into consideration:

• Size & Dimensions – Not all gardens are a perfect square or even a rectangle. Try and draw out the most detailed map you can, measuring distances between your water source, any buildings, trees and features around your garden. Knowing the exact size of your garden will help you calculate it's square footage, so that you can figure out how big your plots will be, how many plants you can plant, and how much fertilizer or compost you will need.
• Soils – Test your soil, take a sample and send it to a nearby county extension agency with an agricultural department. Or find somebody who can test soils. Evaluating your soil will help you more effectively understand what it needs in regards to nutrients.
• Slope - If you have a slope to your garden, it will be useful to record this information on any maps that you create. Depending on soil composition, moisture-loving plants can be planted in low-lying areas at the end of slopes that will gather rainwater.
• Light – Observe your plot throughout the day to determine how much sunlight it receives. Do you get full sun, over six hours of sun or shade? The direction and timing of sunlight should be considered as well, because afternoon light and southern or western exposures will receive more intense levels of sunlight.
• Drainage – Evaluating the drainage on the site is important because it will tell you about soil composition and about how long the soil will retain water after a storm. Conducting a series of drainage tests will help you find out how different areas of your garden drain. To conduct a drainage test, dig a small hole about 1-2 feet deep and fill it with water. You should monitor how quickly the hole empties- if the water is gone in less than hour, the soil is well drained and probably of a sandy texture. If the water takes several hours to disappear, the soil has poor drainage and probably contains a high percentage of clay. Record the areas of well drained and poorly drained soils on your map. See our Soil Health page to find out how to cope with these different types of soils.

There may be other questions to integrate into your site evaluation regarding surrounding features, foot traffic and weather. The most important thing is to ask the questions before choosing and finalizing the site.

About the Author: Pamela Ravenwood is a freelance writer, journalist, and writing coach who lives in the desert. In addition to spending her days writing, she also loves to tend to her organic garden where she grows as much of her own food as possible. In this, she counts on her cord reel to keep her hoses from drying out from the desert heat.