Community Gardens

One thing I have learned over the last 5 months is if you want something, ask. I did it with the pizza coupon, I did it with getting money back on different things, and I did it with the Nalgene bottle. (I also do it at work, and things have really gone well for me because of it- a couple of my pet projects are working out great). Today, I asked my town if I could start a community garden.

With all the reading I have been doing about gardening, I have been learning about community gardens. If you don't know what a community garden is, it's a garden that is divided up into little plots and the residents of that community sign up to grow things in them. Gayla Trail writes about community gardens a lot in her You Grow Girl blog, and she recently wrote this awesome post about how food gardening is on the rise.

This is what I see. People, particularly younger people like myself, are:

1. poor/frugal by necessity or preference
2. interested in locally grown/organic foods
3. proactive

So, what better thing to do when you want to eat good, local food and you're poor/frugal, and you aren't willing to sit around and wait for food prices to go down? Start a garden. If you have a yard, great. If you don't? Community garden! Here's the American Community Gardening Association's page, that has garden finder and all sorts of information. Also, if you're interested in gardening, check out your town's continuing education programs, and see if any local college offers horticulture courses (mine has an amazing program). And, of course, the library is a great resource for classes, books on gardening, and reading gardening magazines (I particularly like Organic Gardening).

I'll let you know what they say about the garden in my town!