Community Gardens are a gardening school for everyone!

They often have unique physical features and reflect the individuality of their members. The wealth of activities and events taking place in gardens is enormously significant to engendering a sense of community among local people.

Far more people than the official membership list enjoy and use community garden spaces.

Community gardens bring together people of all ages and ethnicities, religious and political backgrounds. Moreover, community gardens are visual amenities in the neighbourhood, as well as special places which host community-based activities.

Their diversity and richness cannot be easily substituted by alternative open spaces such as playgrounds or parks that have more structure, spatially and in terms of allowed uses. Community gardens are unique, community-created places; they are visible and vibrant examples of people investing their own time and resources where they live to transform what is often adversity into beauty.

Community gardens are now part of the landscape in a wide variety of countries, from China, Japan and Russia to Canada, Australia and many parts of Europe. The gardens take on multiple forms including community gardens, city farms, community food projects but all tend to have shared characteristics including:

• reclamation of public spaces, for example derelict city sites
• environmental education, especially within the primary school setting
• community enterprise, where communities can develop new sources of income
• social and cultural expression, for example those gardens initiated by immigrant communities
• restorative qualities – gardens as a form of physical and emotional therapy, such as the Care Farms initiative
• social/environmental sustainability, as in the Organic Centre’s Community Food Project and Building Peace through our Shared Environment Project

Here is a link to the National Community Garden Network:

http://cgn.ie/community-garden-horticulture-training