If you're looking for an activity that people of all ages can enjoy, start a community garden. Rallying support from your neighbors, friends or local organizations is a great way to start a garden in your back yard - so to speak. From personal health to neighborhood development to environmental impact, the benefits of community gardening are increasingly good and overwhelmingly shared. Community gardens have helped introduce healthier lifestyles into the homes of young and old for generations - and continue to grow today.
Community Gardens
Begin by bringing people and different organizations together to learn which issues are important to your community. Discuss how a community garden – whether a communal space or individual plots – could serve the needs of the community. Develop a plan of action. Get people energized and organized.
Then, start gardening and implementing your community garden program. Once the project is up and running, let everyone know! Gain greater community support by welcoming visitors and sharing updates on how the neighborhood is benefiting from the garden’s existence. Over time, revisit the plan and make any needed changes based on lessons learned or feedback from partners and neighbors. Remember to plan ahead so that the garden will continue to grow for seasons, and generations, to come.
Follow these 10 steps to get yours started now.
Though it may be too soon to call it an urban wildlife movement, initiatives focused on urban greening and biodiversity seem to be catching on. The U.S. Forest Service, which once laughed off the idea that anything urban could be wild now supports a growing urban forest program. Research has shown that oaks benefit everything from caterpillars to songbirds. Urban ecology and urban wildlife programs are also proliferating on university campuses. And in Baltimore County, officials now stipulate that canopy trees, rather than ornamental trees, must make up 80 percent of any planting on county land, and half of them need to be oaks. In an area where local nurseries hardly ever stocked oaks before, people sometimes balk, until the county’s natural resource manager, Don Outen, explains the logic of it: Research has shown that oaks benefit everything from caterpillars to songbirds. Even fish prosper, because the aquatic invertebrates they feed on favor oak leaves on stream bottoms. At that point, says Outen, the reaction tends to shift to, "Why haven’t we been doing this before?" Accommodating wildlife in cities doesn’t necessarily require massive investment - you can bring in more birds just by cutting out pavement, or breaking up endless lawns with the right kinds of shrubs. Mowing those lawns a little less often - not weekly but every two or three weeks - will increase the population of native bees and other pollinators. Excerpted from Environment 360
The role of parks, community gardens, and green open spaces in urban areas is often underestimated, and the potential of these areas to improve both the quality of life of city dwellers and urban sustainability is not always being fully realized. To make dramatic change, city governments need to get on-board and facilitate the change. But, even a small group in a local community can do amazing things.
You can learn even more in the book, The Guide to Greening Cities.
Community Gardens
• Increase a sense of community ownership and stewardship
• Foster the development of a community identity and spirit
• Bring people together from a wide variety of backgrounds (age, race, culture, social class)
• Build community leaders
• Provide a focal point for community organizing, and can lead to community-based efforts to deal with other social concerns
Begin by bringing people and different organizations together to learn which issues are important to your community. Discuss how a community garden – whether a communal space or individual plots – could serve the needs of the community. Develop a plan of action. Get people energized and organized.
Then, start gardening and implementing your community garden program. Once the project is up and running, let everyone know! Gain greater community support by welcoming visitors and sharing updates on how the neighborhood is benefiting from the garden’s existence. Over time, revisit the plan and make any needed changes based on lessons learned or feedback from partners and neighbors. Remember to plan ahead so that the garden will continue to grow for seasons, and generations, to come.
Follow these 10 steps to get yours started now.Though it may be too soon to call it an urban wildlife movement, initiatives focused on urban greening and biodiversity seem to be catching on. The U.S. Forest Service, which once laughed off the idea that anything urban could be wild now supports a growing urban forest program. Research has shown that oaks benefit everything from caterpillars to songbirds. Urban ecology and urban wildlife programs are also proliferating on university campuses. And in Baltimore County, officials now stipulate that canopy trees, rather than ornamental trees, must make up 80 percent of any planting on county land, and half of them need to be oaks. In an area where local nurseries hardly ever stocked oaks before, people sometimes balk, until the county’s natural resource manager, Don Outen, explains the logic of it: Research has shown that oaks benefit everything from caterpillars to songbirds. Even fish prosper, because the aquatic invertebrates they feed on favor oak leaves on stream bottoms. At that point, says Outen, the reaction tends to shift to, "Why haven’t we been doing this before?" Accommodating wildlife in cities doesn’t necessarily require massive investment - you can bring in more birds just by cutting out pavement, or breaking up endless lawns with the right kinds of shrubs. Mowing those lawns a little less often - not weekly but every two or three weeks - will increase the population of native bees and other pollinators. Excerpted from Environment 360
You can learn even more in the book, The Guide to Greening Cities.
