Community Autonomy Through Gardens

Community Garden Solidarity Networks

Over the course of this community garden team project, we investigated community garden solidarity networks across New York City. One garden, La Finca Del Sur in the South Bronx, became an important inspiration for our project. La Finca Del Sur is an organized garden with an informal coalition of garden members in their region.

We used La Finca del Sur’s informal coalition of South Bronx community gardens as inspiration for a more formalized community hub for other gardens. To the left is our research process: identifying community garden themes, drawing insights from those themes, and extrapolating new themes and values to create our design project. In the diagram at the bottom right, we brainstormed ways to actualize our values.

Solidarity Network Website Mock-up

We chose to mock-up explanatory materials on a website that will serve as a community hub for garden organizing and solidarity. We envision that it will contain social tools for connecting gardens, helping them access resources, and share knowledge.

Our website will incorporate various features, including a community calendar, a successful grant database, a tool sharing library, and educational materials.

We envision the tool sharing library as a physical community hub and virtual site. The idea is inspired by tool library models around the country, including the Eugene Toolbox Project. Members collectively own a cache of tools that would be either prohibitively expensive or impractical for gardeners to own themselves. In order to use the library, members sign a waiver and complete a brief online safety and liability course, a model similar to that of The New School’s own equipment rental program.

The online version of the tool library would be the primary mode of requesting equipment and would allow members to quickly check availability.

Churchill Garden Digital Map

In my role at Huerto de la Familia, I digitized maps for all seven of their organic community gardens to follow seasonal progress of each garden member’s plot. I used an aerial photo to hand-draw a map, which I then digitized in a Google slide document for ease of team use and collaboration.

Huerto de la Familia

Eugene, OR

As an organic garden program assistant for Huerto de la Familia, I managed many garden projects that were requested by our community members, such as a seasonal green house, communal pumpkin patch, and new fence.