Community Gardens

In recent months, I've become an ardent fan and advocate for community gardens.  The growing movement to start community gardens in our cities first came to my attention on one of my favorite shows, Growing a Greener World.  If you do a quick search of this site for "community garden", you'll find a multitude of references to community gardens. 

Community gardens give apartment dwellers and others, who do not have access to land where they can have a garden, a chance to have their own little garden plot.  Not only are there numerous health benefits to gardening activities, but excess produce from a community garden can help feed the hungry in our communities.   It is amazing how much one can grow in just a small 5X10 foot plot. 

We recently visited our friend, Cheryl, in Portland, Oregon.  Cheryl participates in a community garden near where she lives.  The city of Portland sponsors a community gardening project in which residents can rent plots in one of the numerous community gardens scattered across the city for as little as $12.  To read more, here's a link to their website:  Portland Community Garden Project.

Cheryl took us on a tour of her garden.  She participates in the Kenton Community Garden. 

This garden was created from an underutilized city lot in 2011 and covers a little over a third of an acre.  While the land area is quite small there are quite a few plots of varying sizes included.

Here are some pictures from inside the garden.

While looking for information about community gardens, I ran across this website:  American Community Gardening Association.  If you click on the "Find a Garden", you can search on community gardens in your area.