7 FORMS OF
COMMUNITY
GARDENS
PERMACULTURE
LAND SHARE
URBAN FARMS
MARGINAL GARDENING
URBAN FORAGING
GOVERNMENT LAND
COOPERATIVE FARMS
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SECTION 1
PERMACULTURE
Permaculture is much more than the design, cultivation and harvesting
of edible crops – although that is an important part of it. It also
proposes new ways for people to consider the communities they live in
and the way society, at a local as well as a broader level, functions.
One of the ways these two aspects combine is in community gardening
initiatives. There are several forms such initiative can take.
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SECTION 2
LAND
SHARE
Some people have the desire to cultivate food but lack the land on which
to do it. Other people have land but do not have the time or inclination
to cultivate it (but would not mind tasting some of the rewards from doing
so). Land sharing is about putting these two groups of people in contact
to meet both their needs. Via a communal database, those with spare land
can be paired with those who lack it. Typically, in exchange for allowing
them to cultivate the land, the owner will receive a percentage of the
yield from the plot. Not only does this mean that land which may otherwise
have gone unused becomes productive – with all the attendant benefits it
brings not only to the people involved but also to the biodiversity of the
urban area, the soil and the air quality – it also institutes a form of
exchange separate from national currency, promoting more community-mindedness.
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SECTION 3
URBAN
FARMS
Urban farms occur when a community or group of people organize to lease a plot
of land from the local authorities along with the requisite planning permission
to turn it into a food-growing farm. Ideally the land will be reasonably close
to the city center and to public transport links so that it is accessible to
anyone who wishes to get involved, whether they have a car or not (and such a
location also encourages less car use, either through taking public transport,
cycling or walking). Besides fruit and vegetable cultivation, a city farm may
also include community spaces, such as classrooms to teach children about food
production, recycling and exchange programs, and seed banks to preserve native
species. Depending on the ordnances, city farms can even include livestock and
aquaculture. When negotiating a lease for an urban farm it is recommended that
the lease be for not less than five years in the first instance, as this gives
the garden and the community that will prosper around it time to establish
itself and mature.
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SECTION 4
MARGINAL
GARDENING
This refers to planting crops in locations that are currently available amid the
roads and buildings of the urban landscape. Rather than derelict land, it includes
things like verges along the side of roads and railway tracks, window boxes and
herb beds on municipal properties, and cultivation on the roofs of, for instance,
car parks and apartment buildings. These are areas that were not designed for food
cultivation but which can, with a little ingenuity and effort, be transformed to
provide local people with crops.
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SECTION 5
URBAN
FORAGING
Urban areas are also likely to have edible crops already growing within them. They
may less obvious than other forms of community gardening that have defined areas,
but nature usually finds a way of providing even in the most seemingly innocuous
locations. It could be that there are native fruit trees growing on pieces of
common land, or that edible weeds grow along certain arts of riverbanks or canals.
It could be as simple as harvesting nettles which will grow almost anywhere for
nettle soup or nettle wine. Urban foraging offers several benefits. It not only
provides free food, but also allows you to experience your town or city in a new
way, looking at it with forager eyes rather than, say, the consciousness of an
employee. It offers opportunities for exploration, often of areas that previously
may have not had any immediate attraction. It also helps to bring people together
as people swap tips for good foraging locations, and tap into one another's
experience. Furthermore, urban foraging, such as nettle harvesting mentioned above,
can help improve the appearance and feel of an area, making it nicer for the
inhabitants.
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SECTION 6
GOVERNMENT
LAND
Often, local government agencies own many areas of land that has become derelict or
at least not properly maintained. Perhaps it has not community gardening been deemed
to have economic or aesthetic worth and has been left to be over run with weeds and
feral animals. It may be, as in the case of, say, Detroit after the collapse of the
economy there, that the local authorities simply lack the resources to maintain all
the areas of land under their control. Communities can group together and propose
that they tale over the management of the site in exchange for being permitted to
cultivate it. It not only means that previously derelict land gets turned into a
productive location, it is also good advertizing for the government, as being seen
to be leaving land to run wild when there is the community will to make it productive
is bad politics. These areas in turn can become focal points of a community, and the
aesthetic blight of the derelict land is removed, making the neighborhood a more
pleasant place to live.
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SECTION 7
COOPERATIVE
FARMS
If there are not suitable pieces of land that can be cultivated in an urban area, or
the inhabitants lack the time or skills to grow their own food, they may decide to
become part of a co-operative farm. A number of families in the city or town group
together and approach a farmer to grow food to their requirements. Each year or each
growing season the two groups meet to decide on which crops would be preferable over
the next season, and the farmer – who has the skills to ensure a good harvest works
with those goals in mind. The farmer benefits by having a guaranteed market for his
products, and a local one at that meaning that transportation and storage costs are
reduces, while the families are able to source the food they want and know exactly how
it is produced. Often, arrangements are made so that the families will send some time
each year on the farm, helping with the production of food. A subsidiary idea around
cooperative farms is where a group of urban inhabitants pool money to buy a farm in the
surrounding countryside and employ a farmer to run it, although the cost in the first
instance can be prohibitive.
7 Forms of Community Gardening
https://www.regenerative.com/magazine/seven-forms-community-gardening?cctidx=seven-forms-community-gardening
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Readers Digest
https://www.rd.com/
Farmers Almanac
http://www.almanac.com/
Modern Farmer
http://modernfarmer.com/
The Encyclopedia
of Life
http://eol.org/
PLANETKIDS.BIZ
http://www.planetkids.biz/
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