— Written by Masako Watanabe and Suzi Grady, Petaluma Bounty

Community gardens offer a multitude of benefits, and Petaluma Bounty is deeply committed to supporting and sustaining these shared green spaces. Through partnerships, volunteer engagement, and long-term coordination, Petaluma Bounty helps ensure community gardens continue to thrive as vital parts of the local food system. Here are recent milestones of our efforts.

La Tercera Community Garden Rebuilt, New Members Signed Up

From 2007 to 2012, Petaluma Bounty and a dedicated group of volunteers helped create eight community gardens. The first two were elementary school gardens that included family plots. The third community garden was aptly located at La Tercera Park (which means “the Third” in Spanish) in east Petaluma. Over the years, La Tercera Community Garden fell into disrepair. In 2023, after signing an agreement with the City of Petaluma to officially support community gardens, rebuilding La Tercera became our top priority. What followed was a powerful collaboration that culminated in a summer 2024 transformation.

A key partner was Girls Garage, a Berkeley-based nonprofit design and construction school for girls and gender-expansive youth. Students built garden beds and chairs in their workshop, transported them to Petaluma, and installed them while building a shade structure on site. The Eames Institute offered their Petaluma ranch to the students as a base camp base during installation. Petaluma Bounty coordinated the project from start to finish—connecting partners, working with city officials, organizing volunteers, and securing donated materials and resources. By late summer, the revitalized garden space was ready, and Petauma Bounty coordinated community sign-ups for garden plots.

Garden Refresh Brings Joy to Senior Housing Residents

In 2025, Petaluma Bounty partnered with PEP Housing to revitalize the garden at Don Bennett Senior Apartments, which serves seniors living on limited incomes. The goal was to increase food access, wellness, and community connection.

The garden needed help. Beds had sunk low over time, making it difficult for seniors to bend down and plant. Soil was depleted. Participation had dwindled.

With the help of a tenacious group of volunteers from Amica Mutual Insurance, and longtime Petaluma Bounty volunteer Dusty Resnick, the garden was transformed. Volunteers transplanted perennial plants, replenished garden beds, and made essential improvements to the garden site.

Even a heat wave couldn’t stop the work. As the day wore on, members of La Tercera Community Garden stepped in to help complete the project, filling garden beds and new wine-barrel planters with soil purchased from Grab N’ Grow. The purchases were funded by the Intergenerational Gardening Initiative of the Sonoma County Area Agency on Aging (AAA) and SNAP-Ed funding, highlighting the power of cross-sector collaboration. 

From preparations to completion, Petaluma Bounty was there. 

“(Petaluma Bounty Director Suzi Grady) took the time to explain the process and even came down and we walked the gardens while she gave me some good ideas,” the housing site’s property manager commented.

“Unfortunately, when it came time for them to come in and do the job, I was on vacation!! I really wanted to be there. When I returned, I was amazed!! The gardens were so beautiful! I talked to the tenants who told me all about their hard work those two days, especially since the weather was very hot.”

“Last year there were about three people using the garden. Now I hear talk and excitement in everyone’s voice.”

Building a Network of Community Gardens

Though unplanned, tapping La Tercera gardeners to help finish the PEP Housing project reflects Petaluma Bounty’s broader vision: a network of community gardens that support one another through shared expertise, mutual aid, and opportunities for people to keep gardening regardless of physical limitations, limited access to resources, or infrastructure challenges.

The many partnerships that made La Tercera’s rebuilding a success carried dividends forward.

“We were so elated to help rebuild the La Tercera Community Garden in partnership with Girls Garage, The Eames Institute, City of Petaluma Parks and Recreation, and community members,” Bounty Director Grady said. “The following year, when we asked for extra volunteer help to finish the updates to the Don Bennett Apartment garden site, folks from La Tercera were ready to lend a hand. It was a relief, personally, and a beautiful full circle moment.” 

“It is my hope that we can continue to provide backbone support to local community gardens who need it and develop a network of community gardens who support each other through the inevitable highs and lows of garden operations. Over the years, I have seen some gardens thrive and others flail; it is my goal to reduce the number of failed projects and increase the collective capacity of the local gardening movement.” 

Applying Powerful Concepts to Community Gardens

Although Bounty’s intergenerational gardening work with AAA was disrupted due to staff transitions, federal funding cuts, and organizational restructuring, the vision and needs remain clear:

• Different gardens have different resources to share. Some have greater access to capital, some have more people power and gardening skills, still others may have multi-lingual, multicultural engagement capacity.
• Although new projects can be more exciting, renewing support of flagging gardens may be more transformational for the movement and contributors.
• By creating a rotating investment network led by community gardens themselves, the community could contribute to one rebuild/revitalization project per growing season to help support gardens that may not be able to access capital for infrastructure projects.
• Helping the leadership of any one garden see they are part of a larger network or movement may prevent burnout and collapse.

Petaluma Bounty is not creating anything new but rather, leveraging concepts often applied to micro-finance and community development to gardens. There are over 200 terms from across the globe that describe what happens when there is reciprocal investment, susus (an informal, mutual benefit savings and loan system), community banking models, or rotating savings and investment associations. 

Community gardens play a vital role in a strong local food system. They provide fresh, nutritious food, improve quality of life and public health, bring neighbors together, and uplift our spirits. Beyond helping establish new gardens, Petaluma Bounty is committed to building the social and programmatic infrastructure needed to sustain these spaces for generations to come. While funding and staffing will always be a challenge, expanding and strengthening a network of community gardens and farms is possible with cross-sector alliances—with business, municipalities, philanthropy, other service providers, and community.