Shana, You may find that going to the ACGA website and reading through it will answer alot of your questions: <A HREF="http://www.communitygarden.org/";> American Community Gardening Association</A> . The links to community garden organizations throughout the US, Canada and abroad can give you an extraordinary amount of background on community garden horticultural and sociological organization. Contact these folks. While most are usually very busy, the agricultural extension agents and program directors do respond to scholar queries. Please be sure to thank them and acknowledge them in your paper. Also, the ACGA is interested in collecting, in paper and digital form, all new community gardening scholarship. Please contact Anna Maria Edmunds of the University of Michigan for more details on this. Anna wears several hats on the ACGA board and probably can hook you up with the scholarship she has collected. Her direct e-mail is : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Canadian City Farmer site is a must for any student of horticultural practices in community gardens and urban area: <A HREF="http://www.cityfarmer.org/";>City Farmer</A> You may want to also go to the archives of this listserve which are collected at the mallorn computing site. Follow the discussion strings. There is much about community gardening organic practice here. My note: While many community gardeners are "children of the sixties" and bought into organic practices as part of the zeitgeist of the time, there is no uniformity of practice, on a national basis, of organic methods in community gardens. In all seriousness, the professionals in COFA, NOFA and other organic certifying organization have worked hard to create a degree of consensus on best practices. Get any of these folks to tell you about their conferences and the battles to achieve a degree of standardization of organic practice would be a great piece of scholarship, in itself. (What I've heard from people who attended these conventions and have talked out of school has been fascinating - this would be a good book for someone to write.) Community gardeners are volunteers and often come to this avocation with nothing more than good intentions and a few Rodale publications in their backpacks. Others, of course, are master gardeners with years of experience. It really is a mixed bag. Results and practices vary from city to city and often from one raised bed to another. For the purposes of your study, you may want to compare community gardening guidelines in a few cities and then visit a few gardens. While most of us are pretty good about it, don't be suprised when some gardener tells you that they are organic when, out of ignorance, you find a bottle of Miracle-Grow in the garden shed. Good luck with your work. Some gardens ______________________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/community_garden
