Washington, DC – The first-ever community garden census data is now available to the public! Led by Bea Trickett of the Neighborhood Farm Initiative, the city-wide census found that 26.5 public acres are set aside for food cultivation in 35 community gardens.

To date, there has been little coordination between the community gardens, and many gardeners aren’t aware of how they could fit into a larger network of shared resources.  This census creates the baseline data and establishes connections that could have numerous future applications.

The Neighborhood Farm Initiative conducted the project in autumn of 2009. Using borrowed equipment and software, armed with cameras and GPS-devices, Trickett organized a small army of volunteers to travel to each of DC’s 35 community gardens. Volunteers walked the garden perimeters while marking waypoints with a GPS device, interviewed community gardeners, and later interviewed the community garden managers.

“We went on beautiful, sunny weekend days when gardeners were out harvesting and putting their gardens to rest for winter,” says Liz Whitehurst, one of the volunteers.  She wrote a blog post about her experience here.  Katie Cerretani (another volunteer) blogged about her time helping with the garden census here.

For Trickett, this is a process that began over three years ago – “In the fall of 2006, a friend and I were searching for a community garden plot, and experienced a lot of frustration in not finding the information readily available – or where we did find anything, it was totally inaccurate and outdated.”  Judy Tiger’s Gardening Resources of Washington (GROW) had previously kept a list of community garden contacts; however in 2005 when GROW ceased to exist, the lists stopped being updated.”

Trickett explains, “In fall 2007 planning for the 1^st Rooting DC Urban Gardening Forum, I picked up those old lists (by then totally outdated) and made dozens of follow-up calls tracking the garden managers down.  I revised the list again in spring of 2009 for the 2^nd Rooting DC, and tried to share the updated data with websites whose maps were still based on previous versions of the list.  However at the time, I was unable to find any sites willing to recognize that because most of these gardens hold annual elections, publishing the data (whether formatted as a list or a map) requires an annual follow-up commitment in updating the information.”

Thankfully, Kathy Jentz of Washington Gardener Magazine offered to post the DC-garden information chart on her website as part of her regional list of community gardens.  Trickett said, “But after all of this data collection, I still wasn’t finding anywhere in the charts to really give a clear picture of each garden in any detail.”

The Neighborhood Farm Initiative is thrilled to have a permanent home for the community garden chart, map, photos, and synopses of information gathered in the interviews available now at:

www.fieldtoforknetwork.org/community-gardens

If you are a DC-resident living in a ward where community gardens experience overwhelming waiting lists, check out Sharing Backyards DC, a resource where gardeners can connect with homeowners in your area to share privately held yard-space.

The Neighborhood Farm Initiative would like to offer a huge thank you to Kellie Pettyjohn (volunteer cartographer), and to Tommy Pyne, Xi Wang, Katie Cerretani, Eugene Kim, Vrinda Manglik, Liz Whitehurst, Lolly Walsh, and Annabeth Roeschley (volunteer photographers and interviewers), as well as thanks to all the gardeners and garden managers who cooperated in interviews and took time to share stories and information about their garden communities!

Please contact NeighborhoodFarm@gmail.com with any revisions or additions to the list of community gardens.  The Neighborhood Farm Initiative has already heard of several new gardens forming in 2010, and is excited to visit them in the fall!

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