Has anyone here lead a community garden beginning? (Not startup, no money needed. Good joke right?)

[mahina]

Hiya

So my neighbors and I have settled on a little area we own together to make the first community garden in this 50 year old property of multi family buildings.

It’s between two buildings. Nobody in either building is opposed. They either want to participate or don’t care if we go ahead and start.

Now the task is to set up a process for community decisionmaking and take it to the board of directors for the ok.

The two landscaping guys think it’s great. Less for them to mow

I was thinking we’d stake off and tie ropes marking equal areas in shade and sun so every family that wanted either could have.

Thinking we’d start from the middle and ask everyone to choose their area by selecting a space next to another chosen spot so the landscapers don’t have to deal with a patchwork, but one big block.

I was thinking of proposing the City and County of Honolulu community garden rules for debate and vote.

Has anyone worked a community garden plot before? What worked, what didn’t? What would you set up to prevent problems and make things work best?

Mahalo in advance!

[Wawannabe]

1. I have at a liberal arts college

The “kids” were excited at first but did not follow through due to various reasons. People need to be really invested.

Every Earth Day of my tenure I had a plant “planting” booth in the “lane”. I met many college age humans who had never planted a plant. (Lots of wealthy kids.)

Some of these kids really got a fever for growing from this activity tho and came to me on a regular basis for advice and to show me pics of their window gardens. These kids did show to help nurture the community garden but still many of the patches were weeds only.