Community gardens are plots of land where community volunteers come together to produce food, flowers, native and ornamental plants, edible berries and food perennials on public or private lands. The gardeners’ collective takes initiative and responsibility for organising, maintaining, and managing the garden area. This participation builds skills and creates positive community development that is widely accessible to a diverse range of people.
The Willow Creek Community Garden on 6th Street East has been running for many years now, and grows increasingly successful and popular. So much so, that a second community garden, on the West side of the city, may be an idea whose time has come!
There are many different models of successful community gardens. Each starts with a well-developed plan, and each comes with numerous benefits to the community at large as well as to the gardeners themselves:
- A community garden turns a formerly drab and vacant space into a place of beauty, bursting with blooms, greenery and life
- Fresh, healthy produce benefits the families of the community garden participants. Often, excess produce can be donated to local food banks (parts of each bed may be set aside for this purpose)
- Gardening is a physically active lifestyle that is good for you!
- Gardeners are conscientious, tidy people by nature, The presence of a community garden makes the neighbourhood more attractive
- Gardens are good for the soil, the birds, the insects and the atmosphere
- Community gardens provide a space and an opportunity for education on a wide range of useful and increasingly important topics related to food security, health, community development, ecology and citizenship.
Examples
New York https://www.moneycrashers.com/start-community-garden-benefits/
Winnipeg https://winnipeg.ca/publicworks/parksOpenSpace/CommunityGardens/default.stm
Saskatoon https://www.saskatoon.ca/services-residents/housing-property/yard-garden/gardens
Canada-wide https://www.besthealthmag.ca/article/canadas-community-gardens/
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