Community Gardens of the World

From the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to the Vertical Gardens of Hipsterdom

Gardening, farming and growing things has been with modern humans for a long time. In fact, people don’t even realize how far we have come and how quickly we have lost touch with the soil. It’s been an evolutionary blink of an eye.

Did you know that people had cows, garden plots in the city of Chicago as recently as four generations ago? The fact that a cow started the great Chicago fire in 1871 isn’t a freak accident. City dwellers were often farmers too.

Machu Picchu grew its own crops and conserved water in a complicated set of terrace gardens — they might remind you of the modern raised beds today. During times of food insecurity, people turned to allotment gardens — which remain popular in Europe today, and more and more “hip” in large cities like London or Silicon Valley’s San Jose.

Even in urban planning, more thought is being given to providing urbanites with green space. Cities like Taiwan have some of the most amazing gardens and parks. They are record-breaking for their size and design, featuring gigantic vertical gardens and waterfalls.

There is an inherent need for people to see something grow, mature and be harvested — so it can be shared with our families and neighbours. I remember when my grandparents came to visit us and would bring baskets of fruits and vegetables from their allotment garden.

I remember growing up around kids who didn’t know where their food came from and feeling quite lucky that I was able to grow up helping to weed, water and take care of their small allotment. Even though it didn’t seem like that much fun at the time.

Today, I try to help my own son grow up with a sense of where food comes from and how much responsibility and care it takes to get it to grow from seed to harvest, get it into the kitchen and to the table. As a three-year-old, he started eating an astounding amount of zucchini, and although he still rejects any type of tomato — he loves watering them and agrees that they are very “pretty”. Maybe someday, they will make it to his plate.

Urban gardening is going through a renaissance in large cities — it seems that everybody has some sort of garden initiative, often community-based, to help educate people about growing food. There are more gardening methods and tools within our reach — from composting and permaculture workshops, greenhouse gardening guides, hardware and a variety of garden structures that will fit any project, even a balcony.

Gardening programs are meant to invigorate young people, educate them, and even provide employment and training to disadvantaged members of the community.

Here is a look at some of the most interesting urban gardens that have sprouted in recent times — they can be an inspiration and a good example of how even a little at a time can make a huge difference.

The Battery, New York City — a true city garden

I have to mention New York City first because it’s the essence of metropolitanism in most people’s minds — what better contrast than an urban farm? The Battery, at the very tip of Manhattan, is a place that is steeped in colonial history.

This piece of the city’s coast has hosted many military forts that protected New York against the Dutch, and later the British. It has seen the dark times of the slave trade, and the golden era of arts and entertainment in the late 1850s. The Parade to welcome Charles Lindberg home started at The Battery. Castle Clinton National Monument was established in 1975 and later renamed to “The Battery” that we all know.

By the 1990s it was a sad sight. Forgotten, destroyed and largely forgotten, it was in need of some serious repairs. After major renovations, it now serves as an entertainment venue and park. In 2011, The Battery Urban Farm was created — with the goal of educating children about urban farming. It is a part of a large urban community space where people can come to relax and feel “outside” of the city for a while.

The major goal of this project was to provide New York City children with an education to make better eating choices for themselves and develop healthy habits. It was also made with the idea of educating the public about planting urban gardens — with the goal of propagating them throughout other cities and communities

Schools that participate in the gardening program get to take all of the produce grown in their plots. What’s even more amazing is that the garden is able to donate food to local shelters as well. They have a lot of corporate donors and are staffed exclusively by volunteers.

Schools that don’t participate in the garden program can visit too. There are field trips available to visitors and large groups. They include lessons, tastings, and some hands-on gardening work.

The farm is a great place for the community to come together — twice a year they throw family-oriented fetes, where people can come and see what urban farming is all about. People can also sign up for “pick your own” harvest — but spots fill out very quickly! Registration is required by June 19th for the July dates.

The Battery Garden provides:

• Community education
• Volunteering opportunities
• Vegetable supply for the community
• A place to get together with your family

Garden Plots in San Jose, California

The mega-urban city of San Jose, also known for being in the heart of Silicon Valley, is a part of a sprawling metropolis that includes San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Fremont, and a dozen smaller cities.

This busy city has a rich agricultural tradition, that some of the current residents would never guess. In fact, what is known as Silicon Valley today was known as the Valley of Heart’s Delight only a few decades ago.

Rich peach and apricot orchards dotted the pastoral landscape before a building boom after WWII began here, and the Santa Clara County was one of the world’s most prolific canned fruit exporters. Today, you can guess at the region’s history when you spot old, dilapidated wooden barns in some backyards downtown San Jose. They still exist, forgotten.

Scattered throughout the city that is home to over a million people, are small garden allotments. They are squeezed in between apartment buildings, old factories, strip malls, and big suburban homes. They fit into every aspect of this diverse city’s atmosphere. There are 17 of these gardens.

They are fenced, protected and almost free to use for any San Jose resident 18 or over. You have to get on a waiting list that is available at sanjoseca.gov — the city’s website. Their size ranges from only one-tenth of an acre to a whole two and a half acres.

The rules are simple and straightforward — one garden plot per resident, you will get a plot anywhere from 100 to 600 square feet, no herbicides or pesticides, and you get to wait before it’s your turn.

San Jose is an urban metropolis that has welcomed and become home to a very diverse group of people. It has very significant Vietnamese, Mexican, Indian populations. In fact, the Asian population was as high as 34%, and the White population is a minority at 40%.

This makes for some amazing growing grounds for vegetables. A large number of community garden users are older people, who have immigrated fairly recently. They bring their culture and vegetables with them.

It is common to see a community garden that will be full of corn, squash, and beans (the three sisters of the Mesoamerican cultures) and then have a beautiful garden of okra, or eggplants and very particular looking bitter melons right next door.

When growing here, you can hope not only to make friends but learn about other cultures’ growing habits, traditions, and styles. Your grandmother’s kitchen garden is sure going to look different from a kitchen garden from another continent! This is where they all come together.

In San Jose, the big community garden advantages are:

• Community focus
• Self-management
• Responsibility
• Getting to know your neighbours
• Getting to know other cultures
• Following in the footsteps of long-forgotten farmers in the region

London City Gardens, Canada — a great example of a small-town effort

In London, you can get a city garden plot just as you might in San Jose. In London, Canada that is! This little town is a great example of how a community can band around a green project. The plots range from 200 to 400 square feet and are more uniform than their California equivalents. They cost from 30$ for the season to 80$ — depending on your income.

This way, everybody gets a chance to garden. London residents are actually encouraged to start new community gardens. This is a very exciting option because it allows residents to organize together. You need a potential spot — see an empty lot that could use some veggies? Is it big enough for 10 of your gardening friends to come and join you? (The City of London asks for support and interest of at least 10 other people.)

They also look at

• Zoning
• Availability
• Quality of soil
• Drainage
• Sun exposure
• Access to water
• Population density

Some support from the neighbours is helpful as well — if all of the above requirements are fulfilled, the city will send out letters to any neighbour who is within 250 feet of the proposed garden.

London, Canada is a much smaller city than San Jose. with about 384,000 people. It’s interesting to see how although still a pretty populous city, it has a huge allowance for self-organizing and letting fellow urban gardeners work together.

Their mission is to develop “A self-sustaining community garden in each community such that each garden improves the social fabric of that neighbourhood”.

This, in a nutshell, is what every single community garden should be about. In this community, anyone can get gardening help, find out where to buy the best seeds, and just hang out with their neighbours.

Poland’s national culture of allotments

In Poland, the collective allotments list to have close to one million allotments. They can be seen in every city, township and even smaller village. People of all ages remember spending their childhoods helping their parents and grandparents weed and enjoy the fruits of their labour.

“Działkas” as they are called, were a constant source of free food, especially in communist times when it was very hard to come by fresh quality produce. This, in turn, started an incredible preserving culture. Jams, pickles, cordials, compotes, and sauces — many Poles remember this as a MUST for any household.

Although times have changed, Poland is a prime example of how urban farming and gardening can evolve from a necessity to leisure. While the communist era gardens used every square inch of space for cabbages, lettuce, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, raspberries, fruit trees, gooseberries, cucumbers or peas, today the existing allotments are meant for leisure, flowers, landscaping and tiny water gardens.

This is where people come to work, but also to relax. There are community-owned gardens, private gardens, city-owned gardens — you name it. What has survived throughout generations is a much higher knowledge of… pickling and preserving food.

It is a tradition that was born of necessity — although fermenting and preserving is becoming a trend in America, the Poles have got it down to perfection, and this includes the younger generation. This has started a whole new urban movement of healthy slow foods.

Allotment gardening in Poland is an amazing example of how urban gardening can sneak its way into popular culture — everybody knows exactly what you mean when you say “działka” and everybody has either a friend, a grandparent, a parent, an aunt, uncle, acquaintances — who has one.

This is a great example to follow for most urban areas — it can show how even a small piece of land can get people back to nature, gardening and maintaining a healthy hobby.

A worldwide gardening tradition

This is just a small sample of what urbanites are capable of. It’s a small fraction of a giant kaleidoscope of gardens around the world. Because every single city in the world has a gardening environment — weather organized, or not.

Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas — cultures everywhere cultivate their own tradition, and we are each an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to gardening traditions surviving urbanization.

Plant seeds — even if it’s on your balcony or windowsill. You will not only start an amazing hobby but meet passionate people and learn a thing or two about your community!