I like Sharon Gordon's thematic beds and distribution ideas for a garden community that is geared to serve the gardeners and their families. Horticulturally, I see it being very workable and a great place to start your garden layout and planning.
My suggestions are on how to create support in the community for the garden and to give it a "soul": I believe that the best way to create cohesion in a community garden is through service to the larger community. As you are working with young people, you may want to give them the additional mission and good feeling of helping others, by either a mission of food security (raising or sharing food with senior centers, soup kitchens unemployed families, hospices) or by providing a beautiful public garden to a neighborhood that doesn't have one locally. We do it half and half at the Clinton Community Garden in NYC, with the communally maintained front garden open to the whole neighborhood ( via 4,000 + front gate keys, a sign on the front gate saying that a keyholder should let them in, and open gate days on the weekend) and the usual raised bed individual beds in the back garden. Many of the gardeners, including my wife and myself share our produce with seniors, neighbors and the local soup kitchen. This does not go one way - the veggie waste from the soup kitchen where I volunteer goes into our compost and the feeling of being part of the solution is, to paraphrase that omnpresent credit card commerical, "priceless." When working with young people, in particular, it is important to engage their hearts and ideals - helping others and actually meeting the people who are recipients of their work is an amazing stimulus to both group cohesion and volunteer longevity. The high of "knowing that you are making a difference" IS an "addiciton" we want to hook our young people on . The bag of veggies and fruit for mom is nice, but but gets eaten. The feeling that you've done something fine for people who needed it, by working together with others to do it is extraordinary. And a community garden is a great place to do it - you don't have to join the Marines. At the Clinton Community Garden we created the communal front garden first. But please note, communal, we've discovered over 25 years, needs leaders, accountability and manangement by a steering committee elected from the rank and file. We have a general gardener's meeting in March to which our 125 garden members (defined by either being a back gardener or key volunteer) vote to elect a 10 person steering committee which elects it's officers at the first meeting (chair, secy, volunteer coordinator and treasurer). As a 501(c) (3) corporation, we are required to keep accurate minutes and records - the plus side is that we can accept tax-decuctibile gifts, either in kind or in cash, which is extraordinarily helpful. If you go to our website, <A HREF="http://www.clintoncommunitygarden.org/";>Clinton Community Garden</A> you can see our by-laws and general rules. And suprising to most of us, who were or still are lefties of many stripes, Roberts Rules of Order has preserved our process, several friendships and not a few marriages. I realize that this is more organization than a communal youth garden may want, but some sort of basic governance and leadership is key to the success of your group. By working with a good leader the young folks will learn how to lead and take responsibility - take a step forward into what even old time socialists called the vanguard. What I'm saying is that you will need to guide the process, keep communicating, while presenting volunteers every opportunity to grow into leadership positions - learning how to garden well and self-govern at the same time is hard. If you keep it fun and fair in your garden you will eventually get self-governing, good gardeners, but creating the structure in which this can happen is key. Best wishes, Adam Honigman Volunteer, <A HREF="http://www.clintoncommunitygarden.org/";>Clinton Community Garden</A> << Subj: RE: [cg] organizing a communal space Date: 6/18/03 3:20:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Sharon Gordon) Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Laura Neale), [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you could tell us a bit more about how the garden and produce will be used, we could probably help you more. In the meanwhile a few starter thoughts... If the people are going to divide up the produce and take it home to cook separately, I'd work out a good harvesting and distribution system. Bins with people's names on them where the produce is divided equally among people who are putting fairly equal amounts of work into the garden each year would work as long as people could empty their bin at least once a day and have it kept cool and shady in the meanwhile. If the gardening people will be cooking/eating together such as for a shelter for homeless families, I would grow some specific theme gardens such as: Herbs--edible and medicinal, but avoiding the really toxic ones Flowers (perhaps two gardens, one for edible flowers and one for table decor) Pizza garden--sauce tomatoes, onions, sweet and hot peppers, basil, oregano, garlic Salad garden Bean soup garden Potato bar garden Salsa garden Bread garden (if you don't have a lot of space, grow the expensive add ins to the bread and buy the grain) Taco/burrito garden Stir fry garden Halloween garden Christmas food or decoration garden Fruit salad Sunflower bean teepee In either case if there is room, I'd start a small orchard, and also grow something that does well in your area for stakes/arbors, and basketry materials. If you have more land than you need for all the people's food and garden utility needs of the people who want to garden (ok, I can dream), some other fun things might be Soup kitchen donation garden, senior service project Wildflowers Regional Native Plants Food and nonfood plants used by a specific local native tribe Craft garden such as for paper or soap making Butterfly and catapillar garden Beehives If one of the purposes is to be able to add another educational theme, you could have an around the world theme where each plot represents the favorite foods and flowers of each country or region. It would be important if you did something like this to have multiethnic teams that rotated among the plots, so that you didn't have ethnic groups increasing their segregation through focusing on one plot. I would suggest starting with ethnic groups of your volunteers plus major groups in your area to draw more people in. And then seeing what other foodways they are interested in. If you would like to use it as a trial garden to determine varieties that grow well in your area, it might work best for each team to be responsible for a particular fruit or vegetable and have plots devoted to particular vegetables. The plots could vary in size according to the likes of the group (more tomatoes than eggplant probably), but it would help to have them in some sort of standardized unit to make rotation easier. In any case, it would be important for someone to keep up with a map of the garden, so there is a good history of what was grown where for the annual crops each year. Sharon [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> ______________________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. 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