A Community Garden is a place where a group of people living in close proximity work together to cultivate a piece of land in vegetables, fruit, herbs or flowers. Community gardens cultivate both food and community.

Many decades of community gardening experience throughout the country–along with considerable research–have validated the many positive effects that plants and gardening have on human beings, neighborhoods, the environment and local economies.  Perhaps this is why the number of community gardens has increased nationwide by 22% over the last five years, particularly in urban areas.

Of particular interest to us at Petaluma Bounty, community gardens bring specific benefits to lower income families, providing an important means for increasing access to fresh, healthy food at almost no cost. At the same time, they encourage neighborhood beautification and community building; stimulate social interactions; conserve local resources; and, provide bountiful opportunities for recreation, exercise, therapy, and education. 

Petaluma Bounty gardens are also venues for outreach and educational workshops on such topics as organic gardening, seed harvesting, composting, nutrition, healthy food preparation, water conservation, and many other themes.

Our first two community gardens are also school gardens, located at the McKinley and McDowell Elementary Schools.  We kicked off these projects with garden work days in January and February, 2007 and planting began in April and May.  You can see some early pictures of these gardens in our blog pages. 

Our third community garden is now in the planning stage, and will be located at La Tercera Park on the East side of Petaluma.  On June 20th, 2007, the Petaluma Parks & Recreation Commission unanimously approved our proposal to create the garden, in collaboration with the ”Take Back La Tercera Park” group, and instructed us to come back to the Commission with specific garden plans.   After several more community planning meetings, we returned to the Parks & Rec Commission on August 15, at which time the Commission unanimously approved our final proposal. 

Our final step in the approval process comes on September 10th at the 3:00 pm City Council session, when the proposal will appear on the Consent Calendar.  After that, it’s time to start building the garden!