Thursday, November 20, 2008

Community Garden

This is a partial answer to your question Vendor Hippo. We drove by the proposed site for the Henderson community garden and here are some thoughts.
For the most part the grade is fine. There are one or two places that it might be a good idea to move a few shovelfuls of dirt after you till. On the weed condition it would probably be a good idea to rake out the area before you till; both to remove some of the excess weed seed and also to remove all of the rocks and concrete chunks.
We estimate that you could probably get 24-32 plots with an approximate size of 10’X9’. Plot size depends on:
· How large you want your plots.
· How wide you want your paths in the garden (the above figure is based on 3 foot wide paths.)
· What type and how large you want your aesthetically pleasing areas.

There are many options on how to make the community garden aesthetically pleasing. Such as:
· A nice fence around the community garden.
· Rocked border.
· Paths with landscape fabric and crushed rock or pavers (path stones).
· Plants
· Flower garden area or planters
· Accessories
Plants: What types of plants do you want to plant around the garden? You could plant flowering annuals or perennials (annuals last one year and perennials last more than two years.) You could plant some low maintenance perennials and /or bulbs. Irises would be low maintenance and would be green all summer, don’t require a lot of water, and come back every year. Low maintenance shrubs would also be very aesthetically pleasing. You could even plant on the main sides a couple of dwarf trees. If you plant marigolds around the community garden it will be both aesthetically pleasing and marigolds help with garden pests (some pests don’t like marigolds.) there are also other flowering plants that help keep garden pests out. However marigolds are annuals.

Accessories:
Accessories could include some nice benches, rocks, trellis, etching stones ect. It all depends on what your community would like and your budget for this year.
What you choose to do this year will determine how aesthetically pleasing the community garden is.Having a garden there will probably be (with a little work) much more aesthetically pleasing than just leaving it to the weeds, even if you don’t do any rock or shrubs this year. However, something as simple as putting a rocked border around the garden will transform the area immensely.So you need to consider what you want to do.
Lastly, what are you going to do about water…

1 comment:

Vendor Hippo said...

Regarding the community garden in Henderson. The girl I was working with here in Belle Creek has passed me on to her boss whom I will contact this week. Hopefully, we can get good word and actually start planning for next year.

The info you provided is great!

Thank you!
Hippo