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Community Gardens are usually urban pieces of public land collectively gardened by a group of neighbours. They are often split up into plots for individuals or gardened as a common space. Community gardeners come from all walks of life, backgrounds, and ages; community gardens are cornerstones for community development!

Many universities have community gardens or small farms on campus, and SustainableSFU and the SFU Local Food Project are currently working on a developing a community garden at SFU Burnaby campus. If you’re interested you can learn more about the project or contact us to get involved!

 

Find a Community Garden Near You!

There are community gardens popping up all over the Lower Mainland, and we can’t keep up with them all! This is a list of the gardens that we know about, but the best way to find out if there is a garden in your area is to get outside a take a look. If you find a garden, stop and talk to the gardeners to find out how to get a plot (they’re friendly folk!).

 

City Farmer’s Community Garden List - This is an extensive list of community gardens in the cities of Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby, Mission, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Pitt Medows, Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam, Surrey, Langley, and New Westminster.

 

Interested in Starting a New Community Garden?

That’s great! There is huge demand for community gardens, and almost all community gardens are started by community members who share a passion for getting their hands dirty. We’ve seen community gardens go up in 4 months and others that have taken 2 years to get growing, so keep your expectations reasonable! We are excited to share some of our favourite resources for starting community gardens!

 

City of Vancouver’s Food Policy Resources - This page assembles some some key references, links and contact details to help you with your work. It includes: the case for community gardens, design tips, garden guidelines, policies, and reports, and much more!

 

Food Share’s 10 Steps to Starting a Community Garden - This toolbox gives a month-by-month look at starting a community garden. There are a variety of things to consider in building your garden and your group. To mention a few, in the garden – location, layout, the growing season – and in the community – getting gardeners, what rules and regulations, how decisions will be made etc.

 

Community Garden Toolkit – A fantastic toolkit produced by the University of Missouri. You can browse through the steps to build a community garden, facilitation tools, and template documents or download a pdf copy.

 

The Rebel Tomato – This was developed by the American Community Garden Association, and is FULL of fantastic and easy to read support on starting a community garden. Start as a “Seed” explaining the benefits of gardening and giving national examples of neighborhood and school gardens. Next is the “Roots” section. This will help you create the goals you have in mind for your community garden. Following that is the “Shoots” section. This is where you can learn about all basics of gardening, using their “Garden Designer Tool” to help you plot it all out. “Fruits” features educational materials that can be used to teach children while they are tending their gardens. Finally, there is “Harvest”, which will show you how to raise money and find new gardeners to keep your garden growing.

 

Sharing Backyards

If you’re not having any luck finding or starting a community garden, then you may want to check out Sharing Backyards. Sharing Backyards links people with unused yard space to people looking for a place to grow food. Add yourself as “looking for space” or as someone “offering space” on the map, and wait for a neighbour to contact you by email!

 

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