growing together

Com­mu­nity gar­dens are at least as much about com­mu­nity as they are about gardening.

From 120 miles away, I fol­lowed in the pages of the Los Ange­les Times the final days of what was then the country’s largest com­mu­nity gar­den. In a con­tro­ver­sial land deal, the city had sold the site just south of down­town Los Ange­les where almost 350 fam­i­lies had been grow­ing crops for their kitchens or for sale, and the com­mu­nity gar­den­ers faced hav­ing their spaces bull­dozed. The story of the gar­den­ers try­ing to save their spaces in the face of a city gov­ern­ment bent on find­ing more prof­itable uses made for com­pelling news­pa­per copy, and it’s now the sub­ject of The Gar­den, the Acad­emy Award nom­i­nated doc­u­men­tary that is mak­ing its way around the coun­try in gen­eral release.

Check out its most cur­rent screen­ing dates on Face­book. The film came to town two weeks ago, but it was gone within a week, like much of the pro­duce grown in the gar­den it profiled.

Yard-sharing offers a smaller-scale alter­na­tive to the larger com­mu­nity gar­dens and some of the pol­i­tics that go with it. Hyper­loca­vore is a social net­work that helps to match up peo­ple who want to gar­den with home­own­ers or renters who want to pro­duce food on their land but lack the time or exper­tise to do it.


It’s a fairly new space online, and not all com­mu­ni­ties have peo­ple who want to par­tic­i­pate. Here in San Diego, for instance, there’s cur­rently only one per­son on the site. But with grow­ing press, there should be more col­lab­o­ra­tors signed up. It’s a great con­cept, build­ing com­mu­nity, one gar­den at a time.

You can also check some of the other garden-based social net­works on Ning: Here. There might be just the per­fect space for you and your inter­ests. And if not, you can cre­ate one.

June 21 2009 | Categories: art • gardening | Tags: • • • | 7 Comments »