Re: Hello from South Los Angeles

Hop,

Thank you for your interest.  Please go to the American Community Gardening Association website,   American Community Gardening Association , turn your printer on, read our pages carefully and print out the pages you think are relevant.  This will take a few days to absorb what community gardens are about, our various ways of thinking about them and our amazing diversity in design and focus.

One of the Great Links:  ACGA: Starting a CG

Definition: A community garden is a public green space created by some community members for the benefit of the whole community. Its focus may be raising food for a local shelter, the families of gardeners, providing an attractive quiet garden space for the appreciation, quiet recreation, educational and artistic benefit of the community or all of the above.  The design and use of a community garden is local and must be designed to serve that community. The community of gardeners and their neighborhood has to be empowered to create, advocate for and maintain their own spaces, or the community garden will not last when exterior supports are removed due to budgetary concerns, political expediency or the desire of a city government to use the garden site for another land use.

Bottom line: Community gardening is not as easy as it looks, but ordinary people create and maintain them successfully all over the United States, Canada, and throughout the world.

Locally, there is a history to community gardens in Los Angeles that you should be aware of and local contacts to meet and learn from. Adam and Eve started a garden from scratch, and it really didn't turn out well.  Fortunately, you do not have to recreate the wheel when you set of a community garden - which is a necessary economy of time and effort when you are depending on volunteers to help you create the garden and maintain it. 

1)    UC Cooperative Extension LA

2)    UC Davis Common Ground Project

3)   2003 LA Community Garden Struggles

4) Federal Reserve Bank/Food Security, Market and Community Garden Article

This article helps give you the macro view of how greening adovcates and public officials are looking at re-evaluating and using public green spaces in LA
Trust for Public Land Open Space Greenprinting Initiative

This list serve is a free service of the American Community Gardening Association - Please consider becoming a member. The publications, regional and national conferences are extraordinarily useful to all of us. As an individual, the membership cost about the price of a couple of  pizzas and some beers - $25.  Please consider it. ACGA Membership

Good luck,
Adam Honigman
Volunteer,
Clinton Community Garden

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