Community gardens don’t just grow food, they can brighten up empty plots with organic flowers to attract pollinating bees and butterflies.
Let’s Plant & Grow Together is by organic pioneer Ben Raskin. Learn how to transform neglected plots of land into green flourishing spaces.
If growing food, read our posts on no-dig gardening and safe gardening near pets and wildlife.
Learn the history and benefits of community gardens, then find planning advice and etiquette tips, along with information on soil fertility, fundraising, business plans, access rights, marketing and guerrilla gardening (slightly illegal!)
Includes a directory of vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers ideal for community gardens.
RHS has a useful to-do list on how to create a community garden. From contacting your local council to find land to plant on, to buying insurance, finding volunteers and knowing the best items to plant and landscape with.
Petworth Community Garden has created a Men’s Shed where local blokes can get together to meet up and have a natter, while gardening.
Or use given tools to make bat houses and safe bird houses etc to help local wildlife over a cuppa or two.
Avoid tin or bright-coloured birdhouses, as they can overheat, and attract predators.
A Gold Standard London Community Garden
Islington’s Culpeper Community Garden is encircled by trees, with an organic lawn and rose pergolas, a wildlife area, ponds and 49 vegetable plots (including 2 with raised beds for disabled gardeners). There is also a tool shed and compost bin.
Members chat over tea in the hut or on the sun terrace, or simply watch wildlife from garden benches.
The garden was thought up by a local teacher, who took a peek through a hole in a high wall and saw a ‘bomb site’. And decided this wasted space needed some love and care, and could become a relaxing oasis in the city.
After finding out that the demolished street had been named after the 17th century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper, she knew the garden was meant to me, and named it after him! After securing funding, a local architect drew up plans for free, and the garden began to take shape.
After funding was temporarily cut a few years ago, there was such an outcry from local residents that one councillor said he had never had so many letters on one subject. So half the grant was returned, with other funding coming from local donations and charities.
The local wildlife love this garden as much as the people. There’s a bog garden which frogs and toads love (the natural slug control) along with undisturbed nettles and brambles for insects. Woodlice, spiders and centipedes have set up home in the ‘mini-beast mansion’ and dragonflies and birds hover and sing.
