Organic Community Garden
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Organic Community Garden

organic community garden
Photo: Organic Community Garden in SE Portland, Oregon

The sun is out and it finally feels like spring has arrived. Here in the Pacific Northwest where rain is too often despised…people can finally put their Prozac bottles away when the sun comes out. Today I bought an all access day pass for the bus/streetcar/light rail and started a journey of exploration. As I was walking to the bus stop, people from all walks of life were out enjoying the sun. I immediately noticed people were finally taking advantage of this really cool organic community garden near my apartment.

Community gardens where I came from in California were unheard of. But here in Oregon, they are probably the coolest thing ever if you are one of the thousands of people who live in an apartment or condo and don’t have a backyard to grow stuff. Tending to the garden is one of my favorite stress relievers and puts to use land that would otherwise be under utilized.

Community gardening is a great way to add culture and green space in a densely urban community, no matter what city or town you live in. I’m pretty sure there is a local organization in Portland that helps people convert small plots of land into gardens too, but there name escapes me right now. If you happen to live by an organic community garden, you should really consider using it to grow whatever you like. Or an even better project would be to contact your local neighborhood association and advocate for one if there isn’t one close to you.

Find A Community Garden Near You
If you live in the United States or Canada, you can use this searchable community garden finder to locate a community garden near you. If you don’t know of garden near you, think about starting one with your neighbors or think about starting a guerrilla garden.

What would you grow if you had a garden? Would you consider using a community garden if one was close to you? Let us know, we’d like to hear your thoughts.

Thoughts, Comments, Questions…

JT (423 Posts)

Just living life in Portland, Oregon and enjoying every day that goes by. I love the environment, and I love community, and I love being able to share my experiences and perspective with the world. Follow @EnvironmentBlog


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  • Anonymous

    Your children are suffering now from far more dangerous pollutants than the CO2 that each of us exhale with every breath. Cadmium, Mercury, Lead to name a few. Your child’s brain is far more important than anything that Al Gore threatens. His project is a giant money sucking distraction taking your focus away from the actual issues that government and industry would prefer you forget about. Like insisting that your water is clean, insisting that the air you breathe is clean, that your farmland is not destroyed, and that your food doesn’t poison you. Don’t you wonder why CO2 that you exhale with every breath is getting all the press and these other urgent issues have died down in the news? If you have a million dollars or a trillion dollars where would you spend it first? On cleaning up what is damaging your baby’s brain right now, or would you put it in a giant fund to attempt to control the climate of the world? The climate is out of our hands – it will change, it has changed since the beginning of time, ice rearranges itself on the planet, the plates of the planet shift, there are earthquakes, there are volcanoes, there are solar storms – these are not within our control. What is next? Will we start a giant fund to try to put giant staples in the crust of the earth to prevent movement of the continents? Wake up. What is within our control, what is manmade are the toxic chemicals we allow in our water, we spread on our crops, we add to our foods, we spew into our air – these are very much within our control and we – I should say —- Gore and company are more interested in selling you on a huge tax that will address none of these. They are mocking you, and using you to push this huge tax upon yourself that you will receive no benefit from. Oh they tell you they will create “Green Jobs” Wouldn’t you rather have a “green” job making sure your baby has clean water to drink than one that has you enriching Gore tracking and administering “carbon credits” at the new carbon bank????????? Please think for yourself, do your own research, don’t simply follow the pack – that is an extremely dangerous way to operate. – Don’t agree when people ask you to overlook something you know is wrong because they promise you some benefit for overlooking it. This is not a “political party loyalty” thing. Don’t “play the game”. This is not a reality show where you form alliances, it is your family’s health. We need change, real change – we need to stop big industry and big government from serving their interests and not ours. We need vigilance issue by issue and not just party lines. As we have so painfully seen recently neither party has our interests as their first priority. They are both more concerned with power and greed.The reason you will notice Gore screaming urgency with the “Global Warming Issue” is that people are beginning to catch on. Climatologists are speaking up. Geologists have always known it was garbage science and were amused at the ridiculousness of the premise and the foolishness, until they saw how successfully it has been marketed. The people who created this issue are not about “saving the environment”. They are about creating a bank. This new bank will trade “carbon credits”. It will generate huge amounts of money for those involved in the establishment of the bank. It will cost huge amounts of money for everyone else. It will increase pollution, not decrease it. It will increase the cost of energy, for your car, for your house, for your workplace. It will be a burden that will immediately be funneled down to the average Joe in the form of increased cost of everything while the select few that Gore and company have sold this beautiful scam to will make millions. Environmentalists are being buffaloed in the worst way possible. They are recruited to actively lobby for something that will actually increase pollution. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. Gore is not a scientist, he is not an environmentalist. Do some research. Look into his family’s business – it is far from Green, quite the opposite. Look into his scientific training – you will notice there is none. Why and how would they do this?– to siphon off money from industry, ultimately from you. These are highly immoral people with virtually no conscience. What they do is they look for where the money is and they look for what is trendy. When they started looking there was a lot of money in big industry and in oil and coal. Every industry needs it, every car needs it. What was trendy at the time and still is, for good reason, is cleaning up the planet, going “green”. They came up with a scheme where they could get in the middle of the money and the “Cause” and make a fortune. • Step 1 Convince people that a dire emergency is brewing related to their pet cause.• Step 2 Get Celebrity spokes people who are not scientifically oriented and do not have the time to do their own research. Tell them what a noble thing they will be doing – literally saving the world. • Step 3 Collect a bunch of marginal scientific types and offer them a piece of the pie to support your premise. Offer them research grants, fame, access to other projects. (One of the “scientists” at the convention where the “science” was set supposedly “ending the debate” was a gynecologist! Many others had virtually no training in climate or earth sciences)• Step 4 Offer industry the opportunity to exceed their current pollution caps which they know over time will continue to tighten up costing them serious aggravation and to improve their public image and brag about their “green conscience” this is too good to be true for the industry- you have them drooling)• Step 5 Go to environmentalists and say that you will get big industry to “toe the line” to develop and save green space. This is too good to be true for the environmentalist you have them drooling) (When in fact you have just gone to industry telling them here is an opportunity to pollute more LOL you smirk as you do this.)• Use uninformed environmentalists to spread propaganda, make them feel that if they don’t buy into global warming they hate the planet and love pollution. (so what if the science and facts don’t match up with the Global Warming literature) What do facts have to do with anything? What does truth have to do with anything.• Step 6 Use your political connections to either offer a small percentage of the take, or bully and threaten the less powerful folks for support. • Step 7 Go to the weather stations, the national geographic etc – boring barely read or watched at the time and show them the excitement they can stir, the audience they can generate if they jump on board. Tell them they can link every storm or weather event to this dreadful imminent danger. Tell them to threaten to fire “deniers”. (Actual climatologists, and meteorologists who dare to step up and say hey wait a minute what you are saying makes no sense. So what that they are right, they are party poopers, cutting into your revenue). (Don’t worry that the actual founder of the weather channel who actually has integrity is very outspoken about the lack of science and the fraud the current owners are more concerned with bottom line)• Promise “global warming study” grants to Universities who help you push the idea.– Get students who feel powerless in their lives, who are already green advocates and distrust industry and who don’t yet realize that all costs to industry are simply passed on to them, and who will never pick up a geology book or take time to do any actual scientific research and get them riled up about the imminent demise of the planet. • Step 9 Pressure anyone who dares to be interested in the actual truth of the matter, the actual science of the matter, anyone who actually has a conscience to sit down and shut up. Depending on their place in the scheme you can shut them up by showing them so what the science is off – just think how we are raising awareness about green issues, or on the industry side – so what the science is off just think – you can now pollute more and feel good about it for a small fee – in the old scenario you had to eventually clean up your act, now you can buy “green credits” and go scot free. Or if they are a pesky scientist nerd who insists on truth, say so what the science is off, just think of all the projects this will generate for science, the additional funding you will get.• It is perfect – even when there is indisputable proof that the planet hasn’t warmed at all since 1996 you simply change the name to “Climate Change” instead of “Global Warming” you crack yourself up – chuckling and patting your own back for being such a brilliant marketer. No matter what happens with weather you assign it to your need for this tax. • Why pick something like “Global Climate Change” for your scam? Because there is absolutely no accountability, no way to measure if you are properly spending the funds allocated. No matter what happens you claim success or even failure simply soliciting more funds for something that is impossible to measure. Cleaning water, air, farm fields can be measured and tracked and you can be held accountable – not with this made up cause – you pick where the money goes, buying power with industry, with universities, with environmentalists – The ultimate worldwide “Pay to Play scam”. [and we focus on Blagoyovich when he was so small time in comparison]OK so what? Who loses here? YOU DO, I DO, YOUR KIDS DO. Industry in your neighborhood can increase their pollution in your neighborhood, say Chicago, by simply buying “credits” that someone else sold by promising not to develop a piece of forest in some remote part of the world that isn’t suitable for development anyway and would not have been developed in any event. So pollution increases in Chicago and stays the same in timbuctoo. Who gained here? Polluters, and Gore and company who create a whole new bank – they settle all of the transactions between the land owner in timbuctoo and the industry giant, also taking a fee to run the thing. The polluters pay the fee, happily pass the cost to you and increase pollution in your neighborhood, all the while bragging how “green” they are. You and your kids get cancer, and you pay more for all of the goods the polluter produced. Who benefits??? – you guessed it the polluter and the new Carbon Bank Millionaires. And the craziest thing is you as a conscientious citizen concerned with your kids health went to protests to help them push through the cap and trade scheme that will both make you sick and make you broke. These people see you as a ridiculously stupid and lazy “public” who will never check the facts. Someone that they can squeeze another dime from to make them rich, they don’t care about you, the planet, the environment, none of that, they care about making their wallets fat, they care about political power. Unless more people speak up they will get away with it. We need to actually clean up the planet and protect our children, we need to enforce pollution guidelines, not create lucrative loopholes. These people have no soul. Don’t let them get away with it. Do the research, we need a clean planet, we don’t need to buy into bogus science to divert our attention from our goal.Clean Air, Clean Water, Clean Food – not cap and trade political BS that will actually increase pollution and will cost every citizen a small fortune, while making a select few millionaires – smirking at how they fooled you.

  • Anti Pollution Revol

    You have a very interesting blog. I have always liked the idea of starting a community garden, and if I had a garden – though I used to – I would grow any vegetable I'd like to see in a salad … maybe some iceberg lettuce …Anti Pollution Revolution Campaign

  • knickelbein5

    I wrote this letter to my representatives in Congress. I want people to know the younger generation (my generation) cares about environmental issues and is not a bunch of slackers. Please tell me what you think:Dear Congress, My name is Daniel Knickelbein and I am 17 year-old high school student from Oak Park, Illinois. I guess you could call me an “environmentalist,” based on the fact that I believe that global warming is a serious threat to mankind and I believe in the conservation of natural lands and resources in their purest form. But I don’t think I can be labeled as a crazy left-winger because, well, who doesn’t like clean water, or land available for fishing or hiking, or restoring natural forests to their original beauty. The reason I am writing this letter is because I believe that starting TODAY, the United States Congress must act to pass serious climate change legislation, and must also recognize that we must conserve the few natural lands we still have left in this country. The science on global warming is unmistakable. When 97 percent of climatologists in this country believe that global warming is man-made and will have serious effects on our world, we must act to do something about that. It is unfathomable to me how some of you in Congress can not address this issue, while you sit and bicker about party ideals. For those who say that addressing climate change and global warming will hurt the economy, you must think again. As many economists and scientists point out, a “green” economy is an investment in the future, sort of like beginning to tackle the large deficit that has been passed down by many presidents. Now some of you skeptics will say that I am an affluent suburban teenager who has no idea what it is like to experience financial hardship that you say will be cause by tackling global warming. Please think again. My father was a chemist employed at his dream job for 20 years, but when the recession hit, his lab was forced to fire him because of lack of funding. While I am currently by no means poor, my father’s misfortune has left our family in a somewhat difficult situation. Now, we have any opportunity to help millions of other Americans like my father. If our country (you guys and girls in Congress) decide to invest in my future with green technologies, my father might be able to work again. And yes investing in renewable energy and green technology is MY future. Long after all 535 of you are gone, I would like to live in a safe and prosperous planet, not a planet where I have to worry about where I find my next meal, or my next glass of water. If we continue to allow global warming to go unchecked, that scenario is not exactly science fiction, it could and very well may become reality. So today, on the 39th Earth Day, I ask every single member of Congress to consider their priorities as some of the most powerful people in the United States. Do you wish to leave your children and grandchildren in a safe and prosperous world? Should we leave them in a place that is dangerous and unhealthy? Should we allow the few remaining natural lands to be destroyed for a profit? These are questions that I hope you will consider when voting on a climate change bill. The only thing I ask of all of you is to please read my letter, and to consider what I have said. I also want to give thanks to every single one of you for the service you do for your country. I am very lucky to be able to live in a country where I can write this letter freely, and a country where I am able to express my opinions without afterthought. Please consider what I have said in this letter. Sincerely, Daniel Knickelbein

  • Peter

    i have just moved from portland oregon to scottsdale az. i am desperately wanting a garden! and here it is time to plant, now. for the first time in many years, i find myself in an apt. there are many "islands" in the parking lot that are full of rocks, but would make GREAT gardens with a little love. i think everyone here would love to turn those into community gardens. the problem is the landlord is a notorious "slumlord". he will never fix anything or allow anyone to fix anything up. even if you are bettering the complex he always says NO! he is so intent on sticking to this principle that sometimes he even costs himself money in order to maintain his do nothing attitude. so my question is, how can i convince him to do let us do this? or pressure him if need be?

  • JT

    Just do a guerrilla garden, or in other words just do it in the middle of the night when no one is around anyways…once they see it their, they will not mind.

  • Twostep131

    That looks very similar to my garden, though I dono about a community garden. I like my own things!

    Turkey Burgers

  • http://brownricedude.com/how-to-cook-brown-rice talontron

    wow what a great looking garden so beautiful!!!  Im really thinking about growing my own food to have organic produce and with that maybe create my own organic restuarant!!! Organic food tastes wayy better!!!

  • oneup

    gardening is great, such a peacful hobby and you can be so creative!!!!

    how to cook brown rice