We love urban living, but whenever it gets warm we get a yearning for a little plot of land of our own, where we could spend the weekends pruning and planting and soaking up the sun... Walking up Cortland the other day we realized we needn't pick up and move to the midwest just yet -- there was a little community garden just blocks from our house.
After a little research we found that there are tons of such places all over the city. SFGRO (SF Garden Resource Organization) has a listing of all of them which you can search by map. There are also volunteer opportunities at places like Alemany Farm, where the harvested food is given to low-income families in the neighborhood as well as volunteers.
And if you have a pile of parking tickets or community service hours (we're not judging!), some community gardens allow you to work them off through a program called Project 20.
E-mail community.gardeners@gmail.com for more information.
-Lily
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
Another great community garden is the Inner Sunset Community Garden! I've posted about it here: http://jenhewett.blogspot.com/2007/07/public-spaces-part-1.html
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Most in the city have waiting lists, but there is turnover. Also, to be honest, it's a lot of work. We have to go water EVERY DAY in the summer, or arrange for someone else to do it if we want to go away.
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Thanks for this post! I finally got off my butt and signed up for a community garden plot three blocks from my apartment. I'm meeting with the coordinator this weekend to get all the details.
I'm going to start small and simple, to avoid burnout and the feeling like it's too much work. Hopefully I'm not overly romanticizing my memories of gardening when I was growing up.
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