Thanks for presenting this topic! I have participated in both workshare and individual plot urban community gardens and I will say my preference leans toward the individual plot model. Mainly because inevitably someone or a small group has to take on a leadership role in the workshare model which requires a lot of coordinating and picking up the slack when the members with less capacity can't contribute. In my case it lead to an off kilter dynamic and those who put in the most work became tired. I'm sure there are structures that could be put in place to avoid this, but we never quite figured it out. I love my current individual plot because I can interact with my neighbors but I don't have to coordinate with them. And everyone can garden in there own style and method without compromise. I end up spending hours just talking to people at my garden.
When I lived in Portland, Oregon there was a nonprofit called the Urban Farm Collective. Thier model was to make a collective of urban gardens around town and each garden would grow a few select crops. Then every week there would be a "market" where those gardens came together and traded food. Volunteers would receive "slug" tokens for evey hour they worked that they could use to "buy" produce at the market. It worked really well! And everyone got a variety of produce without having to grow everything. They eventually closed due to the struggles of running a non- profit, but I think this could be replicated on a lot of scales.
I was only familiar with the individual plot model until I visited a friend in Santa Fe who was part of a work share/community plot. They could join one of the three work bees held each week. One person was the overall guide and there was a notebook that described the tasks that needed to be done (plant, water, weed, harvest). Then they shared what was available to harvest . It was well organized and a nice social. My friend had no time or space for a garden of her own, but enjoyed the two hours per week she contributed. I think this is a good model for people who are new to gardening as well.
I work for a community organisation in Montreal: while we offer several food related program to our participants, we also run community and collective gardens. Our community garden program is run in conjunction with the city, whereby they give access to the land, provide basic infrastructure, and we have a staff member who manages registrations, gardener conflicts, assign garden plots, etc.
Our collective gardens are run by another staff member, also on city land, but also private land. A team of garden animators oversee each garden, and schedule garden time during which participants who signed up can come in to share the workload. While garden time schedule is decided before the start of the season, almost every other decision is made collectively by the participants: once registered and assigned to a garden, they choose the crops they want to grow, and harvests are shared evenly between the people who showed up on the day. Some of the more die hard gardeners may choose to come in on unsupervised days. All participants contribute to the extent of their capacity. Some of the gardeners also choose to share the harvest with our community kitchen or our food bank.
Our organization is extremely lucky that we are large enough to have a talented urban ag team to manage these gardens.
I am a member at a pretty amazing communal garden space outside of Chicago, which has completely changed the way I think about gardening. Where I am now, it's pretty uncommon to be engaged with land-tending, even at a home-gardening scale, and many folks don't have access to land at all. We are beyond fortunate with the community garden space, to have access to land not only for a community garden but also for wild-tending and habitat restoration work. I lived in Vermont for a few years where I (and all my neighbors) had acreage, and I found that everyone was so overwhelmed trying to manage their "own" land projects, that it was actually pretty hard to connect to folks as I had hoped to about gardening and landtending work.
The garden here, by contrast, is tended and harvested communally, but there is no expectation of specific labor if you show up on a "workday", which is very supportive for me as a disabled person whose energy levels and capacity fluctuates. We do have a project manager who helps oversee the garden project specifically (https://sustaindupage.com/garden). And decisions within the organization are overall made horizontally by a leadership team of "core" volunteers, or members who are especially involved. I don't feel I can speak to the experiences of the project manager in terms of how she feels regarding the division of labor, but as a participant in the garden project and a sub-program focused on seed saving, it truly has been incredibly lovely to experience what garden visioning, labor and harvesting might look like as a communal, rather than individual task. And the community garden folks help me set up my own small plot at home, so it feels like even my "home" garden has become communally-oriented as a result.
I forgot to add here that harvests are not distributed according to labor contributed but by desire & need at the end of each work day. And then we offer the rest of what may remain some weeks to local food banks (and a specific volunteer coordinates that "food security squad" work).
And our membership program ($60/year or 50 hours/year of volunteering) is what gives the organization a small amount of operational funds for supplies, but membership is not required for participation in the garden project. Often members & volunteers, myself included, will contribute seedlings, seeds, tools & supplies, which helps us stretch our pretty minuscule budget. At the time being, we are intentionally only raising funds through membership, instead of through grants.
Back in the day, I volunteered at Hawkswood, run by Organic Lea in London - a well organised cooperative that brought people together to work collectively on the market garden. It was (and I guess still is) a brilliant place to learn about gardening, to work together and to connect with others interested. But it took lots of resources and skill to run it as well as it did - and my guess is not easy to replicate with the funding and other resources most groups will find available.
An often overlooked form of community urban gardening (that I have a personal interest in!) is simply growing at home in a visible space, like a front yard. Although this is very much the individual plot model, it has the benefit of enabling people to meet others close to where they live. This is often actually quite difficult in many urban areas - as people tend to get to know people through their kids and work as well as often their immediate neighbours - but rarely the people who live a few doors down. And growing a few tomatoes and beans in your front yard is a great way to strike up conversation with passers by as you do your morning watering!
In general, I guess, different models will suit different people at different times - so the more diversity of projects we can have in every city the better.
Thanks for presenting this topic! I have participated in both workshare and individual plot urban community gardens and I will say my preference leans toward the individual plot model. Mainly because inevitably someone or a small group has to take on a leadership role in the workshare model which requires a lot of coordinating and picking up the slack when the members with less capacity can't contribute. In my case it lead to an off kilter dynamic and those who put in the most work became tired. I'm sure there are structures that could be put in place to avoid this, but we never quite figured it out. I love my current individual plot because I can interact with my neighbors but I don't have to coordinate with them. And everyone can garden in there own style and method without compromise. I end up spending hours just talking to people at my garden.
When I lived in Portland, Oregon there was a nonprofit called the Urban Farm Collective. Thier model was to make a collective of urban gardens around town and each garden would grow a few select crops. Then every week there would be a "market" where those gardens came together and traded food. Volunteers would receive "slug" tokens for evey hour they worked that they could use to "buy" produce at the market. It worked really well! And everyone got a variety of produce without having to grow everything. They eventually closed due to the struggles of running a non- profit, but I think this could be replicated on a lot of scales.
I was only familiar with the individual plot model until I visited a friend in Santa Fe who was part of a work share/community plot. They could join one of the three work bees held each week. One person was the overall guide and there was a notebook that described the tasks that needed to be done (plant, water, weed, harvest). Then they shared what was available to harvest . It was well organized and a nice social. My friend had no time or space for a garden of her own, but enjoyed the two hours per week she contributed. I think this is a good model for people who are new to gardening as well.
I work for a community organisation in Montreal: while we offer several food related program to our participants, we also run community and collective gardens. Our community garden program is run in conjunction with the city, whereby they give access to the land, provide basic infrastructure, and we have a staff member who manages registrations, gardener conflicts, assign garden plots, etc.
Our collective gardens are run by another staff member, also on city land, but also private land. A team of garden animators oversee each garden, and schedule garden time during which participants who signed up can come in to share the workload. While garden time schedule is decided before the start of the season, almost every other decision is made collectively by the participants: once registered and assigned to a garden, they choose the crops they want to grow, and harvests are shared evenly between the people who showed up on the day. Some of the more die hard gardeners may choose to come in on unsupervised days. All participants contribute to the extent of their capacity. Some of the gardeners also choose to share the harvest with our community kitchen or our food bank.
Our organization is extremely lucky that we are large enough to have a talented urban ag team to manage these gardens.
I am a member at a pretty amazing communal garden space outside of Chicago, which has completely changed the way I think about gardening. Where I am now, it's pretty uncommon to be engaged with land-tending, even at a home-gardening scale, and many folks don't have access to land at all. We are beyond fortunate with the community garden space, to have access to land not only for a community garden but also for wild-tending and habitat restoration work. I lived in Vermont for a few years where I (and all my neighbors) had acreage, and I found that everyone was so overwhelmed trying to manage their "own" land projects, that it was actually pretty hard to connect to folks as I had hoped to about gardening and landtending work.
The garden here, by contrast, is tended and harvested communally, but there is no expectation of specific labor if you show up on a "workday", which is very supportive for me as a disabled person whose energy levels and capacity fluctuates. We do have a project manager who helps oversee the garden project specifically (https://sustaindupage.com/garden). And decisions within the organization are overall made horizontally by a leadership team of "core" volunteers, or members who are especially involved. I don't feel I can speak to the experiences of the project manager in terms of how she feels regarding the division of labor, but as a participant in the garden project and a sub-program focused on seed saving, it truly has been incredibly lovely to experience what garden visioning, labor and harvesting might look like as a communal, rather than individual task. And the community garden folks help me set up my own small plot at home, so it feels like even my "home" garden has become communally-oriented as a result.
I forgot to add here that harvests are not distributed according to labor contributed but by desire & need at the end of each work day. And then we offer the rest of what may remain some weeks to local food banks (and a specific volunteer coordinates that "food security squad" work).
And our membership program ($60/year or 50 hours/year of volunteering) is what gives the organization a small amount of operational funds for supplies, but membership is not required for participation in the garden project. Often members & volunteers, myself included, will contribute seedlings, seeds, tools & supplies, which helps us stretch our pretty minuscule budget. At the time being, we are intentionally only raising funds through membership, instead of through grants.
Back in the day, I volunteered at Hawkswood, run by Organic Lea in London - a well organised cooperative that brought people together to work collectively on the market garden. It was (and I guess still is) a brilliant place to learn about gardening, to work together and to connect with others interested. But it took lots of resources and skill to run it as well as it did - and my guess is not easy to replicate with the funding and other resources most groups will find available.
An often overlooked form of community urban gardening (that I have a personal interest in!) is simply growing at home in a visible space, like a front yard. Although this is very much the individual plot model, it has the benefit of enabling people to meet others close to where they live. This is often actually quite difficult in many urban areas - as people tend to get to know people through their kids and work as well as often their immediate neighbours - but rarely the people who live a few doors down. And growing a few tomatoes and beans in your front yard is a great way to strike up conversation with passers by as you do your morning watering!
In general, I guess, different models will suit different people at different times - so the more diversity of projects we can have in every city the better.