America's Urban Gardeners Build Community

Gardening at one of the nation's 10,000 community gardens.

The Seattle gardeners distributed small amounts of this special "Million Flowers" compost among community gardeners throughout the city, but delivered most of it to the Liberty Community Garden, located just a couple blocks from the World Trade Center site. It was a moving gesture of solidarity among the country's 500,000 community gardeners, who garden at more than 10,000 sites from coast to coast.

The American Community Gardening Association (ACGA), is a networking and advocacy organization that supports community gardeners by providing information, technical assistance, and leadership development. Gardeners attending the annual conference in New York City last summer, represented community gardening programs throughout the U.S. as well as France, the UK, Germany and Canada.

It was no news to those at the conference that development pressure is the greatest challenge for today's community gardeners. As cities look to create more housing and generate more revenue from new commercial buildings, community gardens, which often occupy "vacant lots," become expendable. Today it seems that community gardening is 50 percent gardening, and 50 percent grassroots political activity. Gardeners are, of necessity, becoming community activists, focusing attention on the social, economic and environmental benefits of community gardens.

Corrie Zoll, an ACGA board member and director of Greenspace Partners in Minneapolis, had this to say about the conference: "The ACGA conference in New York City gave me the opportunity to see community gardens being used for voter registration, as drop-in youth centers, as educational space for public health education, and as spaces for community celebrations. This is how a community garden becomes that mysterious glue holding the community together, and this is how community gardens across any city become as important as libraries, parks, and fire departments in providing the infrastructure that makes a community livable."

With this larger agenda in mind, the ACGA has set forth an Advocacy Action Agenda which aims to:

• Cultivate a broader understanding of the benefits of community gardening by decision-makers.
• Educate community gardeners about public policy and grassroots action.
• Preserve existing gardens and advocate for new gardens.
• Foster inter-agency cooperation to promote better access and more funding for gardens.