Community Gardens

Plant at Sunshine Community Garden. Photo by Anya Van Eenoo

Growing and Giving healthy food to everyone

By Anya Van Eenoo

Over twenty community gardens have sprouted in Austin since 2004 as Austinites grow interested in raising vegetables and neighborhood community garden plots fill up.

Community gardens are ecological green spaces where neighborhoods can come together, promote educational programs on gardening and sustainability for children, and share land to garden on. Not only do Austin’s gardens provide a place to socialize and grow plants, they also provide many services to the larger community. This is true for both large gardens, such as Sunshine Community Garden which hosts nearly two hundred plots on over three acres of land, and smaller gardens, like Cherry Creek Community Garden with twenty five plots on half an acre of land.

Not everyone likes Texas weather but some people appreciate it. Gardeners such as Janet Adams, a volunteer at Sunshine, use the weather to their advantage.

“In Texas you can grow in any season,” Adams said. “There are no excuses not to garden, other then it is just something you don’t do”.

Many people enjoy having fresh produce as part of their diet. This is true for Adams’ husband, Randy Thompson and Texas weather helps him with this.

“You can literally go year round in Texas and have something from your garden daily with your meals,” Thompson said.

However the constant heat in summer can cause problems for gardners.

“It’s hard to garden in the years we’ve had where there are ninety consecutive days where it’s been over a hundred degrees. It isn’t fun to be in the sun,” Thompson said.

Gardeners often struggle with the big time commitment that is needed for a successful garden.

The president of Sunshine, James Willmann said, “Given the climate here and the brief growing period we have in the spring …waiting a week sometimes makes a huge difference so you have to learn to make your schedule fit the gardening schedule. I think that’s one of the hardest things for people to do”.

The work that is needed to have a garden is often difficult along with being time consuming.

“Sometimes I hate the garden because I have to work so hard,” Adams said.

Even though gardening can be difficult,

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Food Bank Plots

Vine Vegetable Plots

Root Vegetable Plots

Edible Plant Plots

Ortimental Plant Plots

Flower Garden Trees

Water Feature

Bench

Owl House

Buterfly House

How David Edmerson planned to layout his garden. Graphic by Anya Van Eenoo

with such a large group of people at community gardens there is always someone who is able to help new and experienced gardeners.

Terry Southwell was the neighborhood leader in creating a small neighborhood garden, Cherry Creek, and is now the site director of the garden.

“It is called a community garden. it is as much about community as it is about gardening,” Southwell said. “Everyone is willing to help, everyone is glad to help”.

His view on the importance of community in the gardens is shared by many other gardeners.

“Community gardens allow you to be around people who share your interest in gardening,” Willmann said.. “I have three or four really good friends who are my friends only because we garden together”.

Though it is an important aspect, community gardens are not all about community.

“[I like] being outside and being able to grow plants,” Willmann said. “I very much like to try different varieties of tomatoes and see how they grow that sort of thing”.

As Cherry Creek proves, non gardeners can also enjoy community gardens.

“Even the people that are not gardens here in the neighborhood are very proud of this,” Southwell said. “They love it”.

A lot of work goes into creating community gardens and many attempts to form these community spaces are unsuccessful, according to David Edmerson, a resident of Austin. He tried to create a community garden in 2019 for his neighborhood but was unsuccessful due to restrictions put in by the city.

“I thought it would be neat to have a garden in our community so that people could meet up and grow vegetables…that they could consume for themselves … share with neighbors, and also to contribute to the Austin food banks,” Edmerson said

Edmerson wanted to make a community garden despite being a new gardener himself.

“I moved, and the house that I moved into had three raised garden beds in place and I wanted to take advantage of those, so I started gardening,” he said.

Edmerson lacked experience but even so, his gardens were successful, which led to his initial idea of forming a community garden.

“I was just kinda lucky my first time out,” Edmerson said. “I had a ton of vegetables so I started giving them away to my neighbors and then I thought it’d be really cool to have something closer to my neighborhood where people could go and have a community garden like they have all over other parts of the city”.

After a lot of research and visiting other gardens, Edmerson came up with a plan for his garden. It would be about half an acre, have twenty plots, which would each have a designated use.The garden would also have sustainable wildlife features such as bird houses and wildflower areas.

“Ultimately, the inspiration for the garden was really to produce consumable vegetables at a low cost, but the secondary goal was to create community space where people could meet, congregate, talk, [and] make new friends,” Edmerson said.

His plans for making a community garden are currently on hold, but he will likely continue with his plans in the future.

“I have not given up hope completely, ‘’ Edmerson said.

“I would still like to do it somewhere in the city someday”.

Despite the barriers put up by the city, Edmerson still has a plan he wants to put into action in the near future.

“I would like to put one here in Circle C if things ever change with land availability …but my thought is I will try to start a new one in a different part of the city,” Edmerson said. “I wish I was successful in getting the garden developed”.

“The difficulty of planning, organizing, and forming a community garden, along with the barriers put up by the city does not make it impossible to form a community garden.” Cherry Creek is an example of this.

“The land [that the community garden is on] is owned by the watershed protection group. At one point they met with us and told us that if we wanted to, we could be responsible for maintaining this area, which we did,” Southwell said.

The place where the community garden is located had the houses on it torn down in 2010 because it was in a flood zone. Nearby areas that had also been torn down had turned into dumping areas over the years, and the neighborhood community was worried that it would also become a dumping ground, so several neighborhood leaders and gardeners got together and decided to make it into a community garden.

“We had meetings with the neighborhood and we got a lot of people within the neighborhood that said they wanted to be part of it,” Southwell said.

Southwell contacted the City of Austin to ask for permission to turn the area into a community garden.

“Building something in the floodplain was something that had never been approved of by the City of Austin so we were asking for something new to happen,” Southwell said.

Initially the neighborhood’s plans were denied since it was a floodplain zone but after numerous meetings and negotiations, Southwell managed to convince the city and the floodplain manager to approve the plans. The process of signing contracts, working out a budget with the city, and building the garden took a long time but it was eventually completed.

“We started the process in 2011, and it was 2015 before we were able to open the garden,” Southwell said.

Cherry Creek Community Garden has a monthly work day, which was started at the beginning of the garden.

It was pretty trashy here, so our first outing as a neighborhood down here was picking up trash and cleaning up the area,” Southwell said.

This garden’s success is due to

Top: Sunshine has an extencive and sucsessful composting program. Left: Sunshine has a drip watering system to conserve water while keepng the plants well waterd throughout the year particulerly during summer. Bottom: Donatin to food banks is an importent part of community gardens, Sunshine has a large plot designatd for the Micha 6 food bank. Photos by Anya Van Eenoo the community, which has been a big part of this garden since the start.

“It is a lot of work to get a community garden going, but everyone in the neighborhood really pitched in,” Southwell said.

Even though it took four years to accomplish, it was well worth the effort. The community garden has become a neighborhood attraction for all of its residents.

“It has become a neighborhood recreation area where people can get into a natural environment and feel comfortable being there,” Southwell said. “We are really proud of it and we love it”.

Austin’s community gardens have evolved to include many benefits for both the gardeners and the community. One of the services that many community gardens provide is growing food for local food banks.

“We deliver food to the Micha 6 food bank once a week around this time and twice a week later in the spring and summer,” Adams said.

“Acknowledging that people make mistakes, we tell the gardeners that if they have any excess produce…we can take it to the food pantry,” Thompson added.

Neighborhood gardens, such as the garden Edmerson planned, also provide vegetables to food banks.

“Out of twenty beds, three of them would be dedicated specifically for the food banks and then from there, anyone would be able to donate,” Edmerson said

Along with their food bank programs, Sunshine and Cherry Creek also have large composting programs that not only help the community get rid of their waste, but also help the gardeners have a free source of compost for their plot.

“We make a lot of compost and it is available for everyone to use,” Southwell said.

Community gardens provide many other services to the community, which vary greatly from garden to garden.

“As part of our annual plant sale we always have some plants leftover. So what we do is we let public schools come in and we donate plants to them,” Willmann said.

“Gardening is FUN, so if you want to garden and you don’t have a place to do it, LOOK for a community GARDEN.”

- James Willmann, presedent of Sunshine Community Garden

Top left: Cherry Creek’s shed is three feet off the ground to allow for flood water to pass underneath it. Top middle: A location in Circle C park that Edmerson considered for his community garden. Top righ: Gardeners work in the TSBVI garden at Sunshine. Bottom left: Entrence to the TSBVI garden. Bottom middle: At Cherry Creek clay pots called ollas are barried next to plants and filled with water, the water seeps out of the pots and into the soil, this saves them water. Bottom right: Sunshine has purple marten houses in the garden to attract birds in the spring. Photos by Anya Van Eenoo.

Common services also include providing children the opportunity to garden and learn about gardening.

“[I wanted to] have educational opportunities where we could teach children about gardening, sustainable gardening practices and community outreach,” Edmerson said.

Sunshine has an ongoing plan similar to Edmersons to get children interested in gardening.

“We are going through the process of setting up a children’s garden, a special area for children where we’ll have beds, roughly two feet by two feet where they can go and garden however they want to,” Willmann said. Sunshine also has extensive resources for people with disabilities to allow them to garden more easily. These include raised beds for disabled people. “They are beds that are about three feet high so they don’t have to bend over it and they can use a wheelchair if they need to,” Willmann said. “We don’t charge for those,” he continued. Sunshine is on a piece of land that is owned by The Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impard (TSBVI). Because of this, the volunteers at the garden do what they can to help the students at the school. “They have a garden that’s about sixty by forty feet for their students,” Willmann said. “ We maintain the garden for them and help them with the beds”. Anyone can enjoy community gardening whether they like the gardening or the social aspect. “Gardening is fun,” Willmann said, “So if you want to garden and you don’t have a place to do it, look for a community garden. Try to find one and give it a try. If it ends up being something you don’t like to do, then you can try something else. Being outdoors, working in the soil, watching things grow, is a lot of fun”.