Envisioning Your Project and Laying the Groundwork

Imagine what your future community garden will look like: a beautiful space blooming with vegetables and laughter. Explore all the details of your dream garden.

  • Who is present? Neighbours, friends, volunteers?
  • Who is not there but contributed something or helped you build the garden? Local store owners, landscape architect students, seed companies, community funding agencies?
  • What plants and materials make up your garden? Seeds, transplants, tools, a shed, wood, compost?

    • Create a mental list of all the individual people and separate resources that were in your vision and think about whether they exist, where they are, and how you can access them. These resources and people will be located in different places; separated from you by barriers such as applications and procedures; and you may not know where to find and how to access some of them.

    The project of creating your community garden is the process of organising or bringing together all of these unconnected people and resources. There are many ways to organize all the ingredients that go into creating a community garden. There is no best practice or sure-fire method but successful organizing is often:

  • well thought out and carefully planned
  • flexible to changes as you learn from experiences and mistakes
  • respectful of and makes the most of the resources and abilities available to you

    • An excellent resource on community organizing is “The Citizen’s Handbook: A guide to Building Community” by Charles Dobson from Vancouver Citizen’s Committee, available at http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/welcome.html.

    Laying the groundwork

    There are some basic steps that are fundamental to building the solid foundation needed for the fruitful organising of your community garden. They hep to pull together the peopel that will make it happen, define your project, and map out how you will get from where you are to where you want to be. The following was based on "The Citizen's Handbook". For more comprehensive information, please refer to the book.

    A. Where: Where to begin? B. Who: Who is organizing?

    You have a fantastic idea and need to find information and like-minded people.

  • Research existing literature and examples
  • Join an existing group that is already doing similar work
  • Start your own group if a group does not exist or does not work for you
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    Whether you joined or formed a group, you need a core of 3-5 committed individuals. Talk to acquaintances and soon-to-be acquaintances and look for people with:

  • similar passions and values
  • solid commitment and follow through
  • diverse skills and experiences
  • fantastic and enthusiastic attitude
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    c. What: Defining your project d. How: Planning your project
    When you have your group, brainstorm your ideas on these questions:

  • What are we trying to achieve?
  • What size of area will we organize?
  • Who will support our project?
  • What is a simple and rewarding first action that we can do?
  • How will we reach out to others in our community?
    		•  When you have a good sense of your group and project, think about how you can make things happen.

  • Set simple, achievable goals that will yield concrete results
  • Brainstorm objectives and strategies to reach these goals
  • Narrow down goals and objectives
  • Brainstorm actions to reach these objectives
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    e. When: Creating an action plan f. Adapting to available resources
    When you have small, manageable projects that best fit your visions, values, and available resources, create a flexible action plan with:

  • a list of tasks to complete, sorted according to priority
  • a person assigned to each task
  • a list of necessary resources, including materials, funding and facilities
  • a time-line for completing tasks
    		•  If you have limited resources:
  • Keep your group small
  • Find strong and dependable people
  • Focus on a single project that will produce tangible, rewarding results
  • Tackle one goal at a time
  • Do your most important tasks first
  • Incorporate project tasks into daily life
  • Reduce the time you spend on what feels like work
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