Chapter 1 Building Your Garden Community
IN THIS LESSON
The most important part of a community-focused garden is the people!
Building Your Garden Team
Gardens can nourish your community, offer hands-on opportunities to teach and learn, provide outdoor recreation, and create joy and beauty, BUT someone (or several someones) has to manage them. Who will be that person for your group?
Manage doesn’t mean doing all the work. Being a community-focused garden is all about engaging the community in the garden. Staff (or volunteer leaders) shouldn’t do everything, but someone must be responsible for making sure the tasks are done.
Here are some questions to ask your staff or group:
Who will be responsible for making sure your garden tasks are done? (This doesn’t have to be just one person. It could be a team.)
Will the/how will the garden project fit into your staff’s - or all volunteer organization’s - current workload? We know you are very busy, and we don’t want anyone to become overwhelmed or burned out.
If you are in a community center or maybe a neighborhood, where do you find your team? Here are some suggestions:
Schedule a garden team meeting.
Put a flyer up in the community center (or space frequented by the community) so people know you are planning a garden. Post info on social media. Invite your community to join.
Talk to staff and regulars at the center. People will tell you who the gardeners are. Invite them to participate.
Identify your community leaders. Who are the people in the neighborhood who call people and people answer? If you aren’t known in the community, is there someone who can help make calls and invite people to participate?
Have an initial garden planning meeting. Talk with interested people, and find out what they like to do.
Give volunteers who want to make a commitment to the garden specific leadership tasks connected to their interests. Example- Maybe someone leads the harvest on a particular day or someone is the Friday Waterer who makes sure the irrigation is turned on (and off!).
Write job descriptions to help you and your volunteers understand what their roles and responsibilities are. (See below.)
Once you have two or three core volunteers or involved community members, some of the things staff/leaders might need to track include:
Who is using the garden, when, and for which programs.
Create a shared calendar of garden volunteer days, when the after school program is using the garden, etc.
Who is responsible for taking care of the garden on specific days, holidays, or when the center is closed.
Offer volunteers the opportunity to be the gardener for a day. Make sure volunteers have access to the tools they need to do their job when the center is closed.
Who makes sure the garden tasks are done whether they were supposed to be done by students or core volunteers or a local church interested in a volunteer day. A shared task list or document might help track projects.
Who will supervise volunteer projects. Regular garden activities, like taking care of daily chores on Sunday, can be done without supervision once someone is trained and familiar with the task. Someone needs to teach the volunteers and be available to answer questions, though. Other projects, like working with a school group, need a leader to help the volunteer group with the project.
Who will be the contact person for questions about the garden.
Are there other things your staff or leaders might need to be responsible for?
