 "Photo: Jordy Wagoner/The Daily Texan")
For the aspiring gardener, a community garden represents an expedient option for surrounding yourself with knowledgeable, experienced green thumbs and like-minded eager beginners.
There are abundant community gardening opportunities in Austin, and like other hosts of communal activities in this town, community gardeners in Austin are organized, welcoming and popular.
"To get a plot in our gardens, you have to get on the waiting list, which is at the moment about 100 people,” said Janet Adams, president of Sunshine Community Gardens, located on Sunshine Drive just north of the intersection at Lamar Boulevard and 45th Street.
It’s good that so many people want to participate, community gardeners say, because social and environmental benefits are attached to increased participation.
“Community gardening has all the benefits of having a home garden, in addition to allowing some people to garden who may not have a space to garden at their home,” said Jess Guffey, the Grow Local program coordinator at the Sustainable Food Center.
“Also, having a space where lots of different gardeners can work together makes it possible for gardeners to share information so they can learn even more about gardening. It introduces a whole social element where people get to know each other and know more about their neighbors. It also has the benefit of turning an unused lot where bad activities may happen into something positive.”
For newcomers, the Internet is the best place to start before digging in the dirt. Try the Coalition of Austin Community Gardens’ Web site, which says the organization “actively promotes the stability, support and propagation of Community Gardens in Austin.”
Online, the coalition provides information about 17 local gardens’ locations and contact information. In addition to being a good online resource, the coalition has begun sponsoring gatherings of gardeners and wannabes. The coalition is providing research and making recommendations to the Sustainability Food Policy Board — created by the city last November to encourage sustainable agriculture.
Don’t expect to find all community gardens in Austin created equally.
“Each garden is run a little differently,” said Greg Hammond, who helps maintain the Homewood Heights Community Garden in east Austin.
Some operate on a plot system. In other words, the organization sells or leases a plot of land to a gardener, who either pays a fee or commits to a certain number of volunteer hours (or in some cases, both) in exchange for use of the land, gardening tools and a community environment.
Sunshine Community Gardens is noteworthy for UT students because of its proximity to campus. Adams, who helps grow the plants at Sunshine, says the rules are straightforward.
“People join the garden and they get assigned a plot,” she said. “There are different sizes of plots, and depending on your plot size, that’s how many hours of volunteer work you have to do at the garden.”
The cost averages about an hour a month, rounding out to roughly $90 per year for a regular-sized plot.
At Homewood Heights in east Austin, Hammond said, he and fellow gardeners don’t partition off space but delegate specific crops to different people.
“The gardening system in place is more cooperative than plot-oriented,” he said. “We have many members of the [Homewood Heights] community that want to participate, so we agree on the crops we want to grow as a group, and then each person is assigned to grow a specific crop. We share the bounty, so it’s a little different [than gardens that operate on the plot system] — we don’t come in and just pay for a row.”
Homewood Heights, he said, is comprised mainly of neighborhood residents who pool their gardening skills and ambitions.
“I think the plot-based gardens tend to have people who are not in the neighborhood. Ours is pretty much a neighborhood community garden,” he said.
Those who are interested in participating in already established gardens should start scoping out prospective plots and gardens “just before the planting seasons begin,” Hammond said. In Austin, August marks one pre-planting season on the calendar, and January marks the other.
For those interested in starting a garden, the Sustainable Food Center is currently working with the Austin Parks and Recreation Department to develop guidelines for people who want to start gardens on city park land.
Be the first to comment on this article!