In 2014, my husband and I invited neighbors to garden with us. Many people in our hilly, tree-lined city of Montpelier, Vermont, don't have anywhere to garden, and we had too much lawn. Now more than half of the two-acre property is a collective, all-volunteer community garden, small-scale compost operation, and protected riparian buffer with pollinator plantings.
The garden generates no revenue, so supporters like West Coast Seeds ensure we have high-quality seeds to plant. Gardeners, who comprise about 20 households each season, share the work of planting, tending, and harvesting the crops for to bring home and deliver freshly harvested crops to the Montpelier food pantry, to local churches hosting free community lunches, and directly to neighbors' homes. Plus any seeds we can't use here, we donate to these sites so community members can grow their own food. Our program supported 200 community members.
We would love to see more households convert lawns into food, contributing to the health of pollinators, animal habitat, and the natural environment.
The Garden at 485 Elm is a gardening haven for community members who live in apartments or for whom it's not feasible to manage an entire garden at their own property. Every season includes gardeners who have just moved to the area, and right away they dig in to their community, literally and in getting to know others with overlapping interests and values. Gardeners share knowledge with each other and become garden leaders. Some have moved on to homeownership and are growing food on their own land and volunteering and working in organizations striving to ensure no Vermonter goes hungry.
When this garden began ten seasons ago, we may have been the only collectively grown community garden in Vermont. Now there are other community gardeners growing collectively around the state, including the teaching garden of the Vermont Garden Network, of which this garden is a member. VGN is our mothership and a vital supporter since the Garden at 485 Elm began.