Community Gardens Program
For inquiries contact Angela Hartsell, Community Gardens Coordinator
PROGRAM OVERVIEW
Introduction
Where can you gather with neighbors, exercise, educate children, find fresh produce, grow beautiful flowers, and preserve San Antonio’s green space all at the same time? The answer: a community garden in your neighborhood. Green Spaces Alliance is currently working with 40 groups who have gardens or want to start one. Read on to find out how you can get involved with an existing garden or start a community garden in your neighborhood today.
History of program
The concept of community gardens has been around for a long time. You can find them all over the country and all over the world. San Antonio has had community gardens in the past, but the harsh summer months take the starch out of the garden and the gardeners. The Green Spaces Community Gardens Committee established our program in 2005 with two watchwords: sustainability and shared knowledge. With these guiding principles, the program is designed to improve the health of our citizens and environment, beautify neighborhoods, and strengthen the community by providing a place for people to meet and bond.
The program has found a generous partner in the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation, which was about to launch its pocket park initiative as Green Spaces was getting the Community Garden Program up and running. With their support, Green Spaces developed the program structure that now adds a measure of financial support to start a garden to the clearinghouse of physical resources and shared knowledge. These factors have created a program that is a catalyst for community-sustained green space. Four lucky neighborhoods were picked as pilot projects in late 2006.
Innumerable groups contacted Green Spaces since the beginning of the program. In 2008 and 2009, Green Spaces is facilitating new community gardens with a combination of funding and network resources. As a result, 10 gardens joined the Community Garden Network in 2008 and 7 joined in 2009. Your neighborhood can be the next to add a community garden. See the Resources for Gardeners page for more information.
Join the community garden network and get support from Green Spaces Alliance’s Community Garden Program. Eligible groups may apply for support through Green Spaces' Community Garden Starter Grants. Read the program overview for more information.
What is a Community Garden?
When people think about community gardens, they have various images in their heads based on experience or knowledge. But, for the most part, they think of geographic space with plants. Space and plants create nothing more than a garden; it is the addition of people that makes it a community garden. The style, design, content, and method of management are completely up to the community group.
There are communal gardens where all the members share in all the work and all the benefits. There are plotted gardens where each member maintains and benefits from his or her own plot. Some gardens are composites of these two styles. There are gardens that contain vegetables and other edibles. There are gardens that contain only flowers and trees. Most gardens contain some of both. There are gardens that are designed for efficiency and capacity. There are gardens that are designed for relaxation and beauty. Many gardeners design their spaces to serve multiple functions.
No matter the appearance, it is the group of neighbors working together to create and maintain a space that makes it a community garden.