Dear fellow community gardeners, I am writing to ask for your input on improving garden organization. How do we put the voice of the community into community garden governance? More important, how do we get the voices of the garden renters heard, and considered, by a longtime board of directors that is no longer even elected, let alone responsive?
My city has a series of community gardens all started up, and run, by the same non-profit. We use city land and water and other resources, but there is no city voice on the tiny board that runs the gardens, and no member/gardener voice either. I'm looking for reports or personal accounts that describe how often this happens... how often it leads to collapse of the gardens... or how (and by what means) such "personality-driven" garden groups change to become more democratic and inclusive. Or, become taken over by their local city (bureaucracy?!?) when it gets tired of the complaints... Does this sound familiar to anyone? - Our board is a small group of founding couples and close friends. - They never step down. - Even though the by-laws require annual general meetings, with annual elections by members, from a slate including active gardeners, to a board that is supposed to be mainly gardeners (as opposed to board members choosing other board members) ... we never have them. - Decisions are usually made "ad hoc" without any review of records, or statistics, to see what the real problem might be. - There aren't any records kept. Or shared. - No financial reports. Where is the rent money going? Only some of it comes back to the gardens for maintenance and improvement. - Volunteers are expected to step forward and manage each garden's orientation, annual rentals, training new gardeners, solving daily problems, repairs, improvements, etc. They have no vote on the board, however, and serve at the discretion of the board. - Members, whether new or long-time, who ask tough questions, suffer retaliation, even threats to take away their garden space. There are NO other community gardens in our city or even the surrounding area of the county for us to go to. The result is that people just quit, if they have room to garden at home. Or quit gardening, period. Or retreat to gardening their own plot while doing little to no common-area work. The result is empty plots every year -- rampant weeds -- and actual deterioration or damage to the plots, soil, etc., orchard trees, etc. We don't compost. We don't recruit. We rarely donate to food banks let alone open up plots for food-insecure to grow their own, or others to grow for them. Is it due in part to our organization's flaws that we're not growing? often not even talking to each other? A failed community as well as a failing garden? We are looking for solutions! Links or pointers to any reports on what happens in such situations (preferably what happens to fix them)... Alternatives we have thought of include: - bad press (newspapers or TV). Not terribly constructive sounding. - letters to the editor would just cause more retaliation against those who write them. - lawsuits (seriously ugh). - ask the city attorney to suggest to the non-profit that their use of city property requires a community voice in decision-making. We seem to be not the only private-public group in town that has dwindled into a banana-republic despite an ambitious, community-building original plan, however, so it may be that our city doesn't care. - We are also thinking about a formal request to the city/county for a new community garden, but that would again come straight back to the problem of fixing the existing organisation. Then again, maybe most community gardens are not, despite their mission/ vision/ bylaws, participatory & democratic. Maybe the default is benevolent (?) dictatorship, hidden by the beauty and bounty that are still produced, the hopeful optimism of each year's new members, and the silent resignation of longtime gardeners. Please tell me that's wrong. :-) We are looking for positive solutions! Happy growing! gardenerswest -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20150202/57cf5ecf/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ 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: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
