The Garden Types and How They Work
While Our Garden Project has an ambitious mission, it runs on a simple concept and simple systems: grow and encourage others to grow! Grow for you, your family and friends, your community, and your local pantries and mutual aid groups. Let’s work together to create communities that garden! To help you grow, we have set up a simple system with three types of gardens and four styles within that to help promote coordinated and strategic growing. This will allow year-round growing and timed harvests so that labor can be spread throughout, allowing us to make the biggest impact on growing volume. Instead of 20 people growing a little of everything, those with more space will grow things on the list that take more space, and those with less space will focus on the more compact plants.With this in mind we have:
Types
- Self-operated – Someone who wants a self-operated garden signs up saying they have or will have a garden and are committing to giving away the excess from their harvest. They provide their county so we can track how many gardens we have and in what areas. (In the case that The Garden Project significantly helps with maintenance or set up then the first harvest season the gardener commits to a mutually agreed-on number of plants or square footage to the project for distribution to the community.),
- Private-owned, semi-open – This garden type is hosted on private land with the owner allowing pre-approved volunteers to communal or allotment garden within the boundaries set forth by the landowner. This includes, but is not limited to, days/times of operation, who can come and go, whether it’s by request/invite only, etc.
- Open community garden – This garden can be private or public land, with communal or allotted gardening. This garden would have designated hours, and anyone can come and go within those hours as long as they abide by any pre-existing understanding, rules and boundaries.,
All types are appreciated, necessary, members of the garden network and have the same bonuses, privileges, advantages, and access to help/community and community events.
Styles/How They Work
- Patio/balcony – If you are restricted to small spaces such as patios, balconies, decks, or other areas that have space or pot/planter limits, this is for you!
- Kitchen – This is for your typical yard or kitchen garden with an estimated 30 x 30 square feet or equivalent. It can include plots, beds, and raised beds. No matter how you grow, if it’s equivalent to 30 x 30 feet (900 sq. ft.) or smaller, it’s for you!
- Farm – This is for any garden with 30×30 or greater square footage.
- Guerrilla – Guerrilla gardens are for those of us too lazy to set up, or without access to, a “proper garden” as defined in styles 1-3. We encourage growing in unclaimed and untamed natural or abandoned spaces with very little prep work or maintenance.
