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Neighborhood Gardening Co-op

© Mary Henry

All the current talk about what going to war will mean to our country made me think about the way things were during the world war of my childhood in the 1940s. There were shortages and rationing of many things, so we grew Victory Gardens. With many of the men away, the women helped each other with their gardening and got the children involved. It was neighborly, fun and the kids learned a lot about gardening and responsibility. I know. I was one of those kids.

Following those thoughts I was lead to a memory of the neighborhood I lived in early in my marriage where several neighbors had bought a big outdoor vacuum cleaner together to pick up grass clippings, leaves, acorns and other debris rather than having to sweep them from patios and driveways. I marveled at such an idea, though I didn't live there long enough to become part of the group.

Seems to me that today it might be possible to form a Neighborhood Gardening Co-op that would benefit a group of neighbors, an extended family or a small community gardening group of some other type. I'm talking small here, perhaps no more than 4 to 6 families. If it gets too large, it is not easily manageable without a lot of structure. A small group can help each other with the major gardening and landscape chores and own some of the specialized equipment in common. Think about the benefits there could be.

A group could help each other with round robin leaf raking in the fall, look after each other's gardens during vacations, help build compost bins, and winterize the roses. The group might jointly own a shredder or pool the rental of one a couple of times a year. The greatest benefit would be knowing your neighbors better and feeling part of a group that looks out for one another.

How could this work?

First, you need to put together the group. My NGC consists of my extended family and my next door neighbors. That's four households most of the time, but there are other relatives who have opted in on occasion. Yours might just be your immediate neighbors. I can see small garden clubs forming an NGC too.

Our family NGC shares a shredder. Our biggest logistic problem is how to transport it when we need to use it at another location since we don't all live in the same neighborhood. If your group is only neighbors, this would never be a problem. Far flung NGC members might opt to rent instead of buy in those situations unless someone owns a truck or van and doesn't mind handling the transportation.

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