Join or start a community garden

Community gardens combine the multiple physical and psychological benefits of gardening with another vital element of well-being: connecting with other people. Community gardens not only bring people together in meaningful land-based work and boost food and nutrition security, they also beautify urban spaces, provide ecological niches for wildlife, and create open green spaces that cities desperately need. With secure tenure through mechanisms like land trusts, community gardens can even withstand the pressures of real estate development, ensuring that these green spaces can persists into the future.

Take action

• Find a community garden with the American Community Gardens Association’s map of Gardens (US and Canada), the UK government’s site Apply for an Allotment (England and Wales), Community Gardens Australia’s map (Australia), or by contacting your local government or gardening society.
• Start a community garden with Democracy Collaborative’s Community Garden Start-Up Guide (US) and the many valuable resources from Community Gardens Australia.
• Work together with your local government to find land for community gardens with ChangeLab Solutions’ guide Dig, Eat, and Be Healthy: A Guide to Growing Food on Public Property.
• Consider collectivizing the plots of your community garden so that anyone can volunteer and receive a share of the harvest. 
• Create a movement to turn public spaces all over town into gardens by joining or starting a chapter of the Incredible Edible Network in the UK.

Get inspired

• Mountain Roots Food Project in Colorado, US, runs two collaborative community gardens where members work together to grow food and share the harvest.
• Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin, Germany, is built from mobile container gardens. Volunteers periodically use the containers to create pop-up gardens on vacant land to demonstrate the potential of these spaces for new community gardens.
• The Consumers’ Association of Penang Urban Farm in Penang, Malaysia, transformed an abandoned car park into a thriving community garden, using indigenous farming techniques.
• Through the Incredible Edible initiative, the UK town of Todmorden has turned public spaces into gardens all over the town and allows anyone to harvest food.
• Nuestras Raíces in Holyoke, US, is an immigrant-founded urban agriculture organization managing 14 community gardens as well as an urban farm.

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