Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
MAKING IT REAL
Once you get to consensus and choose a preliminary design, congratulate yourselves! At this point the
community garden members, leaders, and even those who have yet to commit, will likely be able to see
that a shared vision has evolved out of all the hard work and cooperation.
By this time in the process, you'll hopefully have identified some garden experts in your community.
They could be Master Gardeners, landscape designers, knowledgeable enthusiasts, or people who have
worked at local nurseries. If nobody in your community has experience with building a garden, you
might need to seek out someone to help draft plans or, at least, to review them before building begins.
The next stage, following the preliminary design development, is to do some research on costs for
the different elements dreamed up for the new community garden. This process doesn't have to be driv-
en by the group—a few eager volunteers can do some calling around to price out the features. These
numbers will be the basis for your budget. Once the budget numbers come together, you'll begin to
see where fiscal reality comes into play in the garden. If your dreams far outstrip your funding, or the
amount of energy your gardeners can contribute to the garden, then it is time to talk phases.
An easy way to launch phasing is to set up a basic garden infrastructure on the site: build garden
beds, establish the soil and water supplies, and decide on any other basic essentials that will get
the organization up and running. Other desired amenities—an entertainment stage or pergola, for in-
stance—can be left to a second phase. Perhaps that next phase occurs during the winter—a nice oppor-
tunity for garden members to continue working together through the cold, non-growing months.
The point is, don't give up just because you can't do everything at once. Members will feel much
better with a few small successes rather than lots of big projects that don't get done. The bonus to this
approach is that once the community gets through a full season of growing together, ideas that were ori-
ginally considered essential may become less necessary to the community's evolving vision and needs.
And since you want the garden to be around for the long haul, there is plenty of time to add features
as the seasons come and go. Time will also help everyone understand how fiscal demands and dreams
interact.
THE RAISED BED
Materials and Construction
If your community garden is like many, it will employ raised beds, and that means learning how to build
them! Before you or anyone associated with your garden builds anything, however, you will need to establish
safety protocols for your garden organization, which are discussed in
chapters 4
and
5
.
Make sure every per-
son engaged in any activity in the garden has signed the appropriate waivers, and understands the safety rules
you have set forth.
Raised beds are generally made of new, untreated wood, but bricks and cinder blocks or recycled wood
can work, too. If your garden is small, you might consider working with a rebuilding exchange to procure
materials. Just make sure that the recycled materials you use are free of chemicals. This is particularly im-
portant with lumber.
Your budget will dictate the type of wood you can purchase. Pine is less expensive, but doesn't last as
long as other woods. Cedar and redwood last many years, but are more expensive. Really, any type of wood
