Not many people are blessed with a big, open backyard. But even if you don’t have a tiny balcony to call your own, you don’t have to be content with store-bought veggies. Be creative in finding growing space to expand your empire.
Smart gardeners increased their available space by co-opting a bit of the alley outside their home. This narrow bed is home to espaliered fruit trees, garlic, corn, potatoes, rhubarb, and a worm bin.
Community gardens are often colorful, diverse, and welcoming.
A classic community garden approach involves dividing land into small plots gardened by individuals or families. Photo by Andrea Bellamy.
Community gardens often acquire tools for communal use.
The classic solution to the space-shortage problem, community gardens have been around in various forms for centuries. Whether gardened communally or clearly divided into individual plots, community gardens—and their British counterpart, the allotment garden—can be a great place to get growing. In addition to paying a plot fee, gardeners are usually expected to help out with basic garden maintenance, fundraising, or other tasks.
Pros: Meet your neighbors, learn from more experienced gardeners, and share resources. Usually, the cost for an allotment or plot is reasonably affordable.
Cons: You may have to wait a while to get a space; waiting lists can be long. If the garden is far from your home, it can be inconvenient to maintain and harvest. Theft can also be an issue.
Cities are full of underutilized space, much of which is on private residential property. You may have walked by lawn after empty slate of lawn and imagined what you could grow if some of it were yours.
If you have no garden space of your own, consider a shared yard. Nearby friends or relatives might be willing to let you garden on a corner of their property. Another alternative, Sharing Backyards (http://sharingbackyards.com), matches people looking for garden space with those willing to share. You can also try posting a note on a community forum or other online forum, or do it the old-fashioned way and post a note on a bulletin board at your local coffee shop or community center, or even knock on doors of neighbors who might have space to spare. It’s all about connecting with your community.
Some people may want to charge you a small fee for the use of their space, while many are just happy to have their yard beautified for little effort on their part. Most property owners would be grateful for a share of the produce. Key to this arrangement is making sure that you keep your plot looking tidy and that you are respectful of the property owner’s tools, utilities, and space.
Pros: Meet your neighbors, make a friend or two, and gain access to garden space.
Cons: Can take a lot of legwork to find the right space and property owner to share with. Can be unstable—the property could be sold or leased to new renters who are not into sharing, or the property owner could decide that the situation isn’t working, halfway through your growing season.
Forward-thinking employers are keen to offer wellness benefits to employees. A workplace garden supports a healthy lifestyle and provides opportunities for workers to be physically active, connect with coworkers, and relieve stress—all things that are valuable to employers. Plus, workplace gardens make the company look good from a sustainability and community engagement perspective—a key selling feature if you decide to approach your boss about a garden project.
Before you ask your employer about creating a garden, think about whether you want to take over an existing garden space for your personal use or create a multiple-user garden—a community garden for the workplace. You should also determine how and where the garden will be constructed, who will maintain it, and on whose time this maintenance will occur.
Pros: Have fun at work, use your lunch break to de-stress, and garden where you spend a good chunk of your week. Your company might even agree to pay for construction materials.
Cons: Getting the go-ahead could take ages in large or bureaucratic organizations. The soil may be of questionable quality—potentially compacted and polluted with industrial wastes. Coworkers may lose enthusiasm after their initial interest, leaving you to maintain the garden on your own.
School gardens have a long history. They have been used to teach children about healthy lifestyles, environmental stewardship, and nutrition, and they help students connect with and build community.
Pros: Connect with and learn from other students or parents, and improve the biodiversity and sustainability of your campus or schoolyard.
Cons: The approval process can be painfully slow. You will probably have to raise funds or get materials donated to build the garden.
Many elementary school garden programs involve parents. This is a great way to get into gardening and learn with your child. If your child’s school does not have an existing garden, approach the principal and volunteer to lead the project.
A rising number of high schools and universities have areas dedicated to community garden–style growing. If your school lacks a garden, approach your student council or ask your favorite teacher to work with you to get one approved and built.
In college, your student association is a good place to start, as are faculty members who teach environmental and social sciences.
Squash takes over an unused section of train track on land owned by the railroad but tended by locals. Photo by Andrea Bellamy.
Herbs and flowers grow in a checkerboard pattern at an elementary school.
Empty lots, underused public lands, neglected corporate property—there are endless places to build a garden. Guerrilla gardening is less about creating a garden for yourself than it is about greening the urban environment and reclaiming neglected space for the community. The term guerrilla implies sabotage and secretive missions in the dark of night, but you probably won’t have to worry about landing in jail if you get caught. Most cities and police forces are tolerant of this sort of vegetative deviance.
Forgotten spaces are everywhere—the wells around street trees, the medians between sidewalks and streets, neglected planter boxes belonging to businesses or the city, strips of dirt edging buildings and alleys—and they’re dying for a little bit of love. Look for something near your home, because you will be tending it on an almost daily basis if you choose to grow time-intensive annual vegetables. Choose a spot close to an available water tap; otherwise, you will be lugging jugs of water to the site. Finally, be aware that guerrilla gardens are impermanent. You should be prepared to find them mowed down by the city landscaping crew or bulldozed once the empty lot you’ve been tending finally gets developed.
Pros: Meet curious passersby, feed your community, and beautify neglected spaces. Possibly even harvest a meal or three!
Cons: Lack of water access, poor soil quality, and possible harassment from authorities or landowners. Property owners may decide to reclaim their land—or simply boot you off—at any time.
THE GUERRILLA’S GARDEN
By Richard Reynolds, author of On Guerrilla Gardening and founder of GuerrillaGardening.org
There is something particularly delicious about a crop you have grown on land someone else abandoned; it’s a transformation of human trash into nature’s treasure. But doing it without the negligent landowner wanting the fruits of your labor or a stake in the ground requires a bit of guerrilla gardening—in other words, doing it without asking first.
Guerrilla growing edibles serves one of two purposes, and you are best choosing which from the start. The first objective is to provide a feast for your stomach. Question if the land is polluted—there are soil testing kits and bioremediation techniques to investigate (for example, sunflowers help remove lead and oyster mushrooms can break down oil)—and use fresh soil and containers if necessary. You may also need to devise a way of disguising your harvest from snackers, mixing edibles among ornamentals or choosing locations away from loitering pedestrians.
Alternatively, growing guerrilla edibles can be done as a feast for the mind—to surprise people by showing them the potential in an overlooked space. Make an optimistic step towards reclaiming the space legitimately by creating a thought-provoking edible public landscape. In these circumstances you want to make sure the crop is seen, so choose familiar plants (such as corn, tomatoes, and strawberries) and plant visibly. The harvest can be shared with bugs, bees, and any grazing passerby.
Some community gardens dedicate areas to plants that attract beneficial insects. This buckwheat patch attracts bees from nearby hives.
Seed bombs, also known as seed balls, are effective tools for distributing seeds. Each ball contains the basic essentials to get seeds off to a good start. They are often used by guerrilla gardeners in reclaiming derelict and barren sites because they can colonize large areas with only a little grunt work. Simply toss the balls onto a site (do not plant them) and wait for rain, which will kick-start the seeds’ growth. The clay and compost protects seeds from being eaten by birds or scattered by wind until they have a chance to germinate.
This is a fun project to do with friends. Using a 16-ounce (474 ml) cup as a measure for each part in the recipe will yield approximately 300 seed bombs. That’s a lot of bombing action! After they dry, go out and do some “illicit gardening.” It’s good, not-so-clean fun.
5 parts dry red or brown clay*
3 parts dry organic compost
1 part seeds**
1 to 2 parts water
* Dry red or brown clay is the stuff that potters use. You want the dry powder so it can be easily mixed (it commonly comes premoistened, which is not what you want). Ask for it at an art supply store, or check with a potter’s guild to find out where you might obtain some.
** In choosing seeds, avoid species that are potentially invasive, such as mint. For reclaiming neglected spaces and increasing biodiversity, choose self-seeding herbs, grains, and vegetables such as arugula, mache (corn salad or lamb’s lettuce), dill, flax, kale, parsley, and mustard. Attract beneficial insects with anise hyssop, fennel, and calendula. Crimson clover makes an excellent base for your seed mixture because the seeds can be bought cheaply in bulk. Although not edible, crimson clover is an attractive, beneficial insect-attracting crop that adds valuable organic matter and nutrients to the soil.
The gardeners behind this canoe planter must meet a lot of their neighbors; the old canoe, planted with beans, lettuce, peppers, herbs, and chard, is parked just off the sidewalk.
Even if you don’t have a balcony or backyard, you probably have more space than you realize. It just takes a little creative thinking to see it. I didn’t have the space to grow both peas and beans inside the confines of my patio, for example, so I co-opted the back side of my fence, which separates my patio from an alley. In only a narrow strip of soil at the base of the fence, I planted a family of pole beans, which climb up twine attached to the fence.
Take a look at your back alley: could you install narrow raised beds along the alley’s edge? Take a look at your sidewalk: could you grow food in the space between it and the street? Take a look at any hard outdoor surfaces: could you have a container garden on your driveway, porch, fire escape, or staircase? Take a look at your rooftop: is it flat and relatively easy to access? (Remember that you will have to get pots, soil, and water up there, too.) Could it support the weight of a container garden? Take a look at the land surrounding your building: could you convince your landlord, condominium association, or strata council to let you start a garden?
Take a critical look at your space; you may be surprised to find that you have more room than you thought.
‘Fortex’ pole beans grow up a sunny exterior panel of my fence. Photo by Andrea Bellamy.
