Category: ENGLISH

COMMUNITY GARDEN REGULATIONS

Proposal for the Garden Rules

There are many Community Garden Rules on the internet, and this version has been refined over fourteen years into the one you read here. It seems over-regulated, but since the real owner of the land and garden is the local authority, everything should be clear and regulated.

It’s also very important that gardens are not held together by garden rules, but rather by unwritten norms, personal relationships, seasons lived together, the sense of community that is really important.

The Garden Regulations are not the same as the Garden Contract. The Garden Contract contains the legal terms and conditions for the use of the bed, the Garden Regulations are more for cooperation and garden management.

The Garden Rules, however long, cannot cover all aspects of the garden’s operation, which is why garden meetings and competent garden management are important.

The Garden Rules should be posted on the garden notice board for all to read, both garden members and visitors to the garden.

1. General expectations

1.1 The rules are intended to make the operation and use of the Garden clear and understandable to everyone and apply to all members of the community. The Community Garden Rules apply universally to all users of the Garden and may only be changed or modified by community decision.

1.2. No political activity is allowed in the garden. The garden does not engage in direct political activity, is independent of political parties and does not provide or receive financial support from them.

1.3 Members of the garden must conduct themselves in a manner that enhances the reputation of the garden.

1.4. All forms of cooperation between Garden Users are important and should be encouraged.

2. Rules for the use of the Garden:

2.1 The Garden must first and foremost be a safe place for both Garden Users and their guests. The introduction or use of dangerous objects or hazardous materials in the Garden is prohibited. No smoking or consumption of alcohol is permitted in the Garden. The rules of normal social interaction must be followed in the Garden.

2.2. All Plots have the same area, and each Garden User may only cultivate one Plot. Any resident of the District who accepts and respects the rules of the garden and the expectations of the community may become a member of the garden.

2.3 The Garden Fee is used to cover the costs of running the garden: the purchase of tools, seeds, seedlings, etc. Spending must be voted on by the community. Payment of the user fee is due by 31 March each year. Non-payers are automatically excluded after a grace period of one month.

2.4. Each Garden User is responsible for his/her own garden, for the gardening work: planting, watering, weeding, harvesting, and for the maintenance of the common areas of the garden.

2.5. All beds shall be maintained as often as possible on a weekly basis or at least once every 3 weeks. If the Garden User is unable to cultivate his/her garden, he/she must arrange for a competent substitute, in consultation with community members in particular. Any plot that is not maintained for more than 2 month can be charged and transferred to a new Garden User. If the Garden User wishes to terminate his right to use the plot during the growing season, he/she must notify the Garden Manager.

2.6. The right to use the plot is not transferable or permanently assignable.

2.7. The Garden may only grow plants for personal use, and therefore the Garden User may use and harvest the benefits of the Garden for his/her own use and for the use of his/her family members. It is forbidden to sell the produce of the Community Garden!

2.8. No artificial, chemical substances of any kind should be used in the garden, neither for weed control nor for other garden operations. Only and exclusively “organic” certified products may be used.

2.9. No poisonous or narcotic plants may be planted in the Garden. Trees, shrubs and weeds that have been dispersed in the garden by birds or wind-borne plant seeds must be removed from the garden.

2.10. The Garden User may only cultivate his/her own plot, harvest only his/her own crops, respect other people’s plots at all times, and may not touch other people’s plots without specific request.

2.11. At the end of the growing season, all Garden Users are responsible for clearing their plot and its immediate surroundings in preparation for the winter rest period. The same rule applies to the common areas and the Garden as a whole.

2.12. If any Garden User’s plants are attacked by a contagious disease, they must be removed from the bed immediately and other Garden Users must be informed of the potential danger. Infected plants must not be composted and must be removed from the Garden as soon as possible.

2.13. All Garden Users must remove all non-green waste (rubbish) from the Garden. No waste bins may be used in the garden.

2.14. Mailing list, Closed Facebook group: the rules of normal communication must be particularly respected in the internet-based communication of the garden community, the anonymity of the internet must not lead to uncultured behaviour.

3. Community areas, common activities

3.1. Each garden member is responsible for the overall appearance of the garden, and everyone must do their part to maintain it.All garden users are responsible for the continuous maintenance, care and cleaning of the common areas outside the bed throughout the season.

3.2. For the tasks to be carried out during the year (mowing the lawn, watering the common areas, maintaining the herb garden, tending the flower beds, etc.), a task list should be drawn up, in which the garden members undertake the work jointly – on a voluntary basis.  Each garden member should take on tasks according to his or her ability and capacity, in equal proportions.

3.3. Communal areas in the community garden: the grass garden, the flower garden areas, the community space, trees and shrubs, which are maintained under the guidance of a “responsible person”, with the involvement of the community.

3.4. The garden members are required to take part in the work once a month (2 hours per month), and if they are absent, they must do the remaining work. If a garden member fails to participate regularly in the gardening work for reasons for which he/she is responsible, he/she may be expelled from the garden by a majority decision of the gardening partners.

3.5. In the garden, composting should be a shared responsibility. Each plot will share equally in the finished compost. By common agreement, household green waste may also be composted, but the types and types of composting must be agreed in advance between the Garden Users.

3.6. Each Garden User has his/her own key to the Garden and can enter the Garden whenever he/she wants.

3.7. On finishing gardening work, all tools must be returned to their place in a clean and usable condition. The Garden must always be locked when leaving. All water taps in the Garden must be turned off on leaving.

4. Garden coordination, garden management

4.1. The coordination and management of the Garden is carried out by the Garden Manager or the Garden Coordination Group, elected by a community vote. The community authorises the management team to take tasks, organise events and garden meetings and make decisions about the Garden. Each year, the Coordination Group is required to report on the functioning of the garden, the work of the community, their tasks, and our future plans. 

4.2. The garden treasurer is obliged to report and account for the available funds every year. The accounting of expenses is presented at the end of the harvest season. Every year the community votes on the amount of the garden fee.

4.3. The Garden Manager or Garden Coordination Group is required to organise a Garden Users’ Meeting (Garden Meeting) several times a year, and a Garden Builders’ Day at least twice a year, at the beginning and end of the season.

4.4. The garden manager can call a meeting at any time to take joint decisions, or any garden member can call an extraordinary garden meeting.

4.5 Bulletin Board: a shared space for all kinds of information, messages and suggestions about the affairs of the Garden. Political advertisements and promotions are forbidden.

5. Events, children and visitors

5.1. Children may only be in the Garden under adult supervision. Guests invited by the Garden User must be aware of the rules of the Garden and may not touch or damage the beds of others. The Garden User shall be jointly and severally responsible for the conduct of its guests as its own.

5.2. The community garden may organise events such as cultural and leisure activities, garden parties, celebrations of community garden holidays, open days, educational and demonstration activities, and other events supported and approved by the community.

5.3. Participation in events, either as a visitor or as an organiser, is voluntary for the members of the garden.

5.4. Family celebrations can also be organised in the community garden with the knowledge and permission of the community, for example a child’s birthday. Invited guests must be aware of the garden rules, they cannot cause any harm.

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Community garden leaders and the sustainability of the gardens

The last in a series of articles on urban – community gardens, this one is less about plants and growing seasons and more about the organisation of the garden community and the role of garden leaders.

All community gardens need to be managed, garden managers are needed, and in many gardens there is a garden coordination team. An unmanaged garden will not work, everything will be in disarray, the garden and the community itself will decline very quickly. Most communal gardens fall into this mistake, they trust in the ‘power of community’ but fail to consider that if there is no thoughtful management, no planned season, the whole thing will miss the mark and die. Somehow the garden community needs to be understood as a company, an organisation. Many different people, many different skills come together, and they need to be guided in the same direction, organised and coordinated in the day-to-day running of the garden.

Importantly, it is not the garden manager’s job to do everything himself, but rather to create the conditions for the community to do the garden tasks themselves, efficiently, quickly and cheerfully. The garden manager is more of an organiser, more of a coordinator and of course he or she does some of the physical work.

Although the garden is ready, it has had a few successful seasons, but that doesn’t mean it is functional on its own, it needs a person, or perhaps a small group, to think through the season, call the garden meetings, communicate with the local authority, keep track of the garden’s assets, manage the garden’s internal and external communications. The goal is always to have a successful and relaxed season for the garden that year, to achieve success at community and individual level.

The one-third rule

A broad generalisation about all community gardens is that a third of the members are active and participate in all events, another third only attend the main events, and there is a third who are rarely seen, sometimes or not at all involved in the life of the garden. For them, the only thing that matters is their beds, or worse, their beds become deserted and weedy by mid-season, which is a serious problem, and in a garden where all the garden members have the same size bed, neglected beds are very noticeable. In this case, the garden leader should step in and ask the neglected gardener to give back his bed so that a new, more active member can be selected by the community from the waiting list. Fortunately, every garden has a long waiting list, it is easy to bring new members into the garden. The garden by-laws set out how neglectful gardeners can be removed from the garden, partly by written warning, partly by verbal warning and finally, if they do not respond, the community can vote them out of membership. This step is not to be neglected, it is better to have a new, enthusiastic garden member to replace the neglectful gardener.

There are situations when the garden manager has to take “firm” action. There are cases when a garden member is found to be unfit to exist in a community, his behaviour, his habitus make him unfit for community life. These are the community destroyers. Often they are unable to communicate with other gardeners in the right tone of voice, or without the approval of the community they do something in the garden that is bad for everyone or detracts from the overall image of the garden. In such cases, the garden manager has to step in and either persuade or, as a last resort, vote the person out of the garden. There have been examples of gardeners who have been found to have alcohol problems, and it is not acceptable for a gardener to stagger around the garden with many young children present. There were also examples of the garden partner’s personality making him unfit to participate in the community, causing strife, destroying the community, inadequate personal communication with others, and such a person needs to be urgently removed from the garden.

Communication problems very often come up in e-mail conversations. In addition to the keyboard, some people indulge in far more than they would in face-to-face communication, and this must be stopped immediately, not allowed to escalate, because in the long run it has a devastating effect. Don’t be afraid to put someone out of the garden, do it calmly, without offence, give them the opportunity to retreat with their head held high.

New garden members in the garden

Each garden has a long waiting list so we can select the applicants. It’s worth inviting applicants to the garden, several at once, and telling them what garden membership means. Many people have an unrealistic view of how community gardens work, there is a lot of idealism, it is better to be clear from the start what the tasks, responsibilities and benefits will be for the new garden member. Some people back away from signing up when they learn that the garden involves shared responsibilities, not just a bed to garden in. When choosing a new garden member, pay attention to the integration of the new garden member into the garden community. Introduce the new members at the next garden meeting, put them on the mailing list, give them all the knowledge and good advice they need to integrate easily and quickly into the garden community.

The tasks of a garden manager:

  • The most important tasks of a community garden leader include: involving members, delegating tasks and responsibilities, and resolving conflicts.
  • A key role is to coordinate, build community, create and maintain stability and cohesion.
  • Organises garden meetings and garden events.
  • Represents the garden in a defined capacity, liaises with the designated unit of the municipality.
  • The garden manager is responsible for enforcing the garden rules and the house rules.
  • Coordinate garden communications, external and internal coordination together.
  • Overseeing the garden’s membership fees, leases and budget.
  • Keeping records of the garden’s financial assets.
  • The goal to be achieved by the garden manager is the optimal operation of the garden, achieving long-term sustainability.

Culture of cooperation

One of the most important tasks of the garden manager or garden coordination team is to develop a culture of cooperation. All members should be able to work and associate with others, making decisions together about the future of the garden, participating in the physical maintenance of the garden, and being part of the community. The success of a community garden is the result of the cooperation of its members. Nature will do its work independently.

What makes a good garden manager?

Be a good gardener, but more importantly, be able to communicate with a wide range of people, Often retired teachers and people used to management make the best garden managers. Garden managers need to be able to deal with conflict quickly and effectively. Garden managers must have time to organise and volunteer for the garden.

A good garden leader can run a garden meeting well. Garden meetings are a forum for discussing garden business, and effective and to the point meetings are essential. It is interesting to note that during the Covid epidemic we held online garden meetings and they were not effective. Much better to be in person. Garden meetings should be held a few more times a year: beginning of season garden meetings, end of season garden meetings, and during the year if there is a need.

The garden manager must be able to harmonise different ideas and expectations, and most importantly, to promote community decision-making in all cases. It is not the garden manager who decides on the major issues of the garden, but rather coordinates the community to make important decisions themselves and helps and organises their implementation.

Community garden management should be the responsibility of one person for the first season, because too much participation will only hinder an effective learning process. However, for subsequent seasons, it is better to establish a garden coordination group. One person is likely to have too many tasks to manage the garden, but by dividing the work into different sub-tasks, you will make your job easier.

Keeping the gardens working.

We build community gardens for decades. The only garden I have had that I know of that was built as a temporary garden is the Böszi Garden, which was built on a construction site and will be discontinued when the economic situation allows the planned municipal investment to get underway. The gardeners have taken note of this situation, so they experience each season as a gift and hope that they might have another season. At the same time, my oldest garden, the Első Kis-Pesti Kert, completed its 12th season this year, has become an important part of Kispest’s life and the neighbourhood over the past dozen years, and there seems no reason why anything should prevent it from continuing to thrive for decades to come.

In 2012, I was in New York for the American Community Garden Association conference and we visited several community gardens in New York. Some of them were 40-50 years old. No one remembered who the founders were, none of the people who started urban gardening back then were alive. And yet they still exist perfectly well, with gardening revived season after season. It took the city to accept the benefits of these urban gardens and start actively supporting them. The logic is quite simple, community-maintained urban gardens are infinitely cheaper for the city than park maintenance, but they also have a much higher biological value, are more permanent, are free from vandalism, are an ornament to the neighbourhood, host many events of importance to the district, participate in the environmental education of youth and, most importantly, create active neighbourhood communities. A global city is made up of many of these small communities.

Once these community gardens are established on municipal land, as a municipal investment, smart municipalities will include the gardens in the district’s so-called green space management plan. This means that the municipality cannot let the garden go, saying that it is ready, it is now cultivated and maintained by the gardeners. Every asset has its amortization period, it deteriorates, it decays, it needs to be replaced. Here, bed frames are the main expense. After having established 9 gardens, I have to say that there is no really good solution for raised bed borders. They are depreciating assets. Most of the time we use wooden bed frames, but no matter how much we protect and treat them, they start to decay and rot after 5-6 years. Standing outdoors in winter and summer, in sunshine and winter frost, they will inevitably break down after a while.

We can build the beds, for example with bricks or concrete blocks, but the cost of building these is unrealistically high, and is usually rejected by planners and local government representatives during construction. The clever municipality will include a depreciation cost for the community garden, from which the gardens can buy the timber needed for renovation and then rebuild the deteriorated beds themselves. This is community work, an unavoidable task.

Community gardens are getting richer every year. It’s almost unbelievable how many varieties of plants can grow in these gardens. From the second to the third season, the flowers will become more and more numerous, the fruit trees more and more numerous. Groups from the schools and kindergartens in the area will get used to the garden, they will have biology classes in the garden, the inhabitants of the area will like the garden because it is beautiful, because it shows a different face every day, because it is interesting and good. One of the best feelings is when strangers from the neighbourhood call me and say, “Nice garden, congratulations. That is success.

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The community garden implementation process and the first season

In this section, I will try to put the process of implementing the community gardens in chronological order, with a focus on the events and tasks of the first season. Of course, each garden is unique and their implementation is different, but the main milestones are the same. The other important element is that only municipal gardens will be discussed.

December – January

The community garden is a joint project with the municipality, on municipal land and as a municipal investment, we inevitably have to adapt to the way the administration and the organisation works. You have to be able to wait out the bureaucratic process until everything is in its right place. The most important thing is to budget for the creation of the community garden and to allocate capital to it when the municipal budget is drawn up for next year. This requires a budget, often asks for feasibility studies and references. This is done before the end of the year and approved by the municipal assembly. Then a contract can be signed with the municipality, for the establishment of the garden, for the management of the garden, all this takes a lot of time, but this is where the process starts.

Community gardener recruitment. The first public forum, location and date should be announced. Because we are organizing neighborhood communities it is best to recruit prospective garden members from the neighborhood, it is worth posting the event in the doorways of neighboring houses. An inspiring presentation should be prepared for the community forum, so that people can see what to expect, what will happen, and how they can get involved in the garden’s creation. We’ll start registering people from the first session and set up a closed mailing list where we can keep in touch. Don’t be surprised if not all the beds are sold out the first time, by the time the garden is ready there will be a long waiting list.

Böszi Garten – neighbourhood community. The red dots are the gardeners’ homes. The blue spot is the garden.

February- Garden meetings, training, launch of the design process

We usually hold two-weekly garden meetings and training sessions, during which we come up with a name for the garden, possibly an emblem, discuss garden contracts, garden rules, vote on the bed rent, and elect a garden treasurer. Meanwhile, let’s start the garden design with concept plans. Invite landscape architects, or perhaps students in a university course week, to prepare concept plans. It makes sense to work with relatively short deadlines, as we want to open the garden in early summer. In the meantime, gardening education will be launched. The gardening course will be four classroom sessions, and after the garden is complete, the learning will continue outdoors.

March

By this time, the design concept for the garden has been developed and the landscape architect is working on the final design. It is worth inviting him to a garden meeting where he/she will explain how the garden will look, introduce the plans, and give comments. In the meantime, gardener education is being provided along the lines of the theme.

April

The garden design is finished, the contractor starts building the garden. It’s worth inviting the contractor to a garden meeting to explain the main steps of the garden construction and to discuss who can participate in what work. The aim is that the community that is being formed should also take part in the construction and running of the garden, so that they develop a stronger, deeper bond with the garden. The tasks of maintaining the garden will be talked through, and everyone will have to take a part. We start planning community events for the season. In the meantime, gardening and compost education is going on. Composting is a separate science, so it’s worth setting up a separate training session.

The construction of the garden should be carried out and supervised by the municipality. It is too big a task to be undertaken without competence. The physical construction of a garden is a profession, if you don’t know how to do it, don’t do it, you can lose big.

May

By May, the garden is usually ready, beds are assigned at the garden meeting, garden contracts are signed by all gardeners, garden keys are handed out and the first season’s “bed rental fee” is paid to the garden treasurer. Each garden has expenses, seeds to be bought, common garden tools, paints, watering cans and printing costs, which are funded from the common treasury. All expenses are discussed at the garden meeting and approved by the community.) Each gardener is given a key to the garden, everyone goes to the garden when they feel like it or have time. Many like to garden early in the morning, others after work. The gardens are basically locked, there have been occasions when an unwitting visitor has accidentally caused damage, so the garden gate is usually locked even when there are gardeners inside, but interested visitors are let in and shown around the garden.

By May, the gardeners’ bed-planting designs will be ready, and the seedlings will be planted at home. We cannot grow enough seedlings to fill the bed at home, so it is worth ordering seedlings from specialised companies. In the meantime, we will also discuss planting the herb garden and flower beds. The aim is to have everything ready for planting day, so that everyone knows what we are going to do and where it will go.

Planting plan

Planting day takes place in May. This is one of the most important events in the garden establishment process. This is when the seedlings are put in the ground, the herb garden is planted and the season starts. Gardening Day is a milestone in the life of the garden, it is when the first growing season really begins. Planting day is usually held on a Saturday or Sunday, so be prepared for it to be at least a 4-6 hour occupation. A botanist will help you get the planting right.

June

The plants are growing nicely and we are getting ready to build the garden furniture. Used pallets, purchased wood, but definitely have the gardeners build the tables and benches, possibly composting frames too. This is a weekend activity, you can build everything in a day or two if there are enough of us and tools. Also, prepare a fire pit, a sandpit for the kids, invent and furnish a community space. The tools will start to accumulate in the garden, storage for them will have to be figured out. In the first season, a large wooden box that we build ourselves is enough; later on, the community usually builds a proper tool storage or receives a subsidy. Always make sure that the garden looks good, that there is no clutter and that inappropriate things are not put in the garden.

July

In July, we usually hold the grand opening of the garden. So far, there has been a lot of press coverage of the garden in the district, the project has been featured in the district’s newspapers and TV, and the opening is the culmination of this. The mayor, the members of the council, everyone who had something to do with the garden’s creation, all come. The garden members bring cakes, cookies, maybe we can make something delicious on the fireplace. There are speeches, but more interesting is the garden itself and the community, who by this time have dressed the garden up quite a bit, the beds are starting to look nice. Close cooperation with the municipal press office is important. The community garden is a rewarding subject and is often featured in the local newspaper. In the coming years, the gardens tend to celebrate the garden’s birthday, an event very similar to the opening ceremony.

During the summer there are fewer garden meetings, everyone is in the garden anyway, we get together when we are building something or having a garden party. And of course after work, it’s nice to get out for a little watering, weeding, and conversation. It’s a way to wind down for the day. The first crops appear, and the first pests appear. Many gardeners go on holiday, arranging with remaining gardeners to water each other’s beds. In the community gardens, we don’t touch each other’s beds, that’s the rule, but we will help a fellow gardener on holiday with watering if asked. To help with pest identification and control, a botanist will come to the garden and explain and demonstrate proper control.

August

This is the time when the harvest begins to come in droves and when most people go on holiday. Be sure to have people watching the beds, helping with irrigation. It is worthwhile to do a garden statistic in the first season, with all bed owners measuring and keeping a record of their crops. This tends to be very interesting because when you add up the final results, it turns out that the community garden produces a surprising amount of crops. In 2023, according to the garden statistics, the Böszi garden produced almost a tonne of vegetables, a surprising amount, and if you add the shop prices, you end up with a very substantial sum, not to mention the quality. Numbers in the garden.

The urban gardener can expect a return on investment of around 400-500%. This is a very similar figure to what he measured in the crisis gardens during the world war. (A válságok kertjei) Every dollar invested yielded $5 in crops. Surprisingly good business.

The last weekend in August is International World Kitchen Garden Day. Most urban gardens hold their own International Kitchen Garden Day. We hold an open garden day, with posters inviting people in the garden. The gardeners show the garden and their beds to the public. The community comes up with the programmes and organises the day’s events. It is a popular press event, or families and residents of the area come to the garden.

September

This is the time when everything is ready, when there are lots of crops, when gardeners’ families tend to rebel against the constant eating of courgettes. The compost bins start to fill up and next spring we will have good quality compost of our own.

Composting is a constant topic of debate. There are those who conscientiously chop everything up, and others who don’t bother. Sometimes it’s just easier to cut up the larger pieces left in the composting bin than to argue or blame. The problem will be solved in a few years.

October

The season is slowly coming to an end, and we are starting to prepare to get the garden ready for the winter period. Cleaning out the beds, adding nutrients, etc. We need to organise an end-of-season build-up day in advance, usually at the end of October. A lot of green garden waste is generated at this time, so it may be worth re-learning how to compost.

November

We are back to one meeting a month. We evaluate the year and start planning for the next season. In recent years I have sent out an online questionnaire to all garden members, a kind of satisfaction survey, with very interesting results. It helps a lot in planning the next season and the municipality is also interested in the questionnaire.

It is important, especially in the common areas, to discuss what worked, what didn’t, how to improve the garden for the next year. Many valuable comments are made about the garden, innovations, new tools, suggestions for organisation.

The last two months of the year, when the garden manager of the first season, the garden founder, leaves the garden, must be prepared for this, a new garden manager must be elected. At the garden meeting, we go through the tasks of the garden leader and the community elects garden leaders from the applicants. It is recommended to form a garden coordination team of 2-3 people, it is a bit much work for one person. It is worth clarifying who will stay in the garden, are there any leavers? New garden members will be selected from the waiting list to replace those who leave. There is turnover in every garden, with a 3-5% drop-out rate. This usually means 1-2 beds. They leave the garden for various reasons, mainly moving new house, maybe a new job that doesn’t give them time to garden.

December

To close the year, we celebrate the first season of the garden, have a party, the future garden coordination team takes over the management of the garden.

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Community development and education programmes in community gardens

Article series 04

It is a commonplace to say that in a community garden, ten percent is gardening and ninety percent is community life. Many people come to the garden for the companionship, the community programs, or perhaps for the environmental consciousness; the plants are really just a valuable plus.

The word of Community is a fashionable word today, it is a bit overused, it has lost much of its original meaning. In this section, I would like to describe garden communities, their development and their functioning.

Community development is an essential element in the establishment of community gardens. Potential gardeners don’t know each other when the garden is started, random volunteers, who should develop a tight-knit community by the end of the first year, who will be able to maintain and develop the garden in the following seasons. The task of the first year is to get the members to work together through conscious organisation, tasks and meetings, to develop a culture of cooperation, to finish the first season successfully and to prepare them to continue working independently. 

It is a common mistake to neglect community development when establishing a community garden, when there is no community development or no conscious element. I see many gardens that have been built by the municipality, handed over to the gardeners, but there has been no community development, it has become a chaotic, dysfunctional garden, more of an embarrassment to the municipality than a success. Communities don’t develop on their own, they need development, external intervention to help the gardening team through the first season, both to get through the season successfully and to become a community in the process. Community building is a prerequisite for the success of community gardens, an essential element.

If there is no systematic development, on the one hand, there is no culture of cooperation, and in the worst case, the community that has not yet been formed may break up into factions and small groups that hardly cooperate with each other. But there are also many examples of individuals provoking discord in the garden with their lack of community, their willfulness, as happens on a larger scale in society. Certainly there are individuals who, if not consciously, act as community destroyers, to the detriment of the community that is being formed. Such situations need to be dealt with by the garden manager, either to bring the person to their senses or to ban them from the garden.

The focus and foundation of community building is the garden itself, through which community cooperation and neighbourhood community is created. Garden communities are organised around a fixed location, where they always meet and where events take place. It is not only the garden beds and their own crops, but the development, care and events of the garden itself that build the community, giving tradition and continuity over the seasons. It is relatively easy to build community in a garden.

It is important that every gardener and family has an individual garden bed, and it is also important that everyone has exactly the same kind of bed. Communal gardening is not viable, you can’t see how much work someone puts into their plants, how careful they are. The individual garden beds inevitably give rise to gardening competition (my tomatoes are redder, my courgettes are bigger, I have more beans, etc.) This is a very important element, because it gives a sense of achievement, it is a constant topic of conversation, and halfway through the season gardeners are already planning the plants and planting order for the next season. The garden competition is triggering of the increasing biodiversity of the garden. In addition, there are areas of common cultivation, the herb garden, flower sections, these are areas of common gardening. The long-term goal of garden communities is to achieve sustainability.

There’s always something going on in the beds, the garden always gives you something to do, the plants give you enough pleasure and excitement, it’s easy to build a community in a garden where nature provides the rhythm, the activity and the sense of achievement, the garden manager’s job is to organise the smooth and predictable running of the garden.

Regular community events and garden meetings are essential, especially in the first season. Events can include garden meetings, building garden furniture, garden parties, garden clean-up days, hosting guests in the garden, etc. All should be well-organised events. A community garden gives you tasks, not just to keep your own bed tidy, but the whole garden. A garden is a set of tasks that require organisation, cooperation, coordination, foresight and communication. It is the combination of these and their successful operation that makes a group of gardeners a community. This is what the first season is for, to practice how to run the garden together. It is the task of the garden founder to organise these events and to see the first season through successfully. Everyone finds a task and a sense of achievement in the garden.

Very important garden tools for community building are communal spaces, fire pits, tables and chairs, which are mostly built by garden members from pallets. This is the centre of the garden, where we can hold garden meetings during the summer, where garden cooking is done, where the conversations take place. You need to be able to sit down in the garden, you need to build lots of benches. There should be a sandpit for the children, that’s usually the community place for them.

The fire, cooking together, has a very strong community-building power. Garden parties are a nice way to feel good, when we cook together, fry bacon, have a fire, have company, there are lots of us in the garden, and we can talk about all sorts of things.

Gardens are run according to rules: on the one hand, there is a garden contract, which defines the legal relationship between the garden and the gardener. In addition, there is a set of garden regulations, which help to define garden behaviour and cooperation. It should be mentioned that in every garden there are unwritten norms, and that the formation of community norms, customary laws and traditions is part of becoming a community. In well-established gardens that have been around for several seasons, these are an automatic part of the process. In the case of start-up gardens, the founder or garden leader leads the team in establishing them. Garden rules and norm building make the garden’s organisational functioning predictable and acceptable, and in the long term, a stable and predictable organisation.

Community development is in many ways similar to business development, but the goal is not to make a profit, but to maintain the garden and see the seasons through. Garden meetings are also similar to company meetings in many ways, there are agenda items, tasks to be done, things to be discussed, planning, resources to be allocated and monitoring to follow through. Of course, it is much more relaxed, much more informal than a corporate event, but the goal is very similar, the success of the organisation.

The one-third rule.

Becoming a community does not mean that everything becomes uniform, everyone becomes the same, everyone takes an equal part in the life of the garden. Even in established, long-operating gardens, there is a third of the membership who are very active, attending every event, another third who come most of the time, participate in the life of the garden, and a third who are much less so. It’s not a family or a company, it’s a community of volunteers. We must make sure that there are no neglected beds, that there are not a majority of people who only take care of their own beds and hardly any of the garden. From time to time, lazy garden members can be asked to leave the garden and replaced by more active, eager new members. Each garden has a long waiting list.

Education for gardeners

We are not born gardeners, and a good gardener is always learning, we are not dealing with a static thing, but with nature. Experience has shown that garden education is important for start-up gardens, both to give everyone a comprehensive basic training in growing plants and to give them professional help during the season, for example on planting day or in season for pest control. All gardens are organic with an emphasis on natural control, professional help is essential. There is a serlist of products that can be used for plant protection in the garden, but they are all ecologically neutral, we strive for natural control and prohibit the use of chemical products under any circumstances. In the same way, we do not use fertiliser in the garden, we enrich the soil of the beds with natural manure and compost produced in the garden.

In the start-up gardens, we will hold 4 classroom sessions before the season.

In the start-up gardens, we will hold 4 classroom sessions before the season.

The topics are approximately as follows

  1. Basic gardening concepts, soil and nutrients, plant classification, environmental needs (soil, nutrients, water, sunlight, temperature), plant protection, garden tools

2. Reproduction, plant protection, sowing, planting, transplanting, seedling, grafting, germination, cuttings

3. Vegetables, grouping of vegetables, their biology, ecological needs, cultivation technology, detailed description of the most important vegetables. 

4. Cultivation of medicinal plants, herbs, flowers, berries, their uses, balance between edible and ornamental plants. Flowers are multiplied in multi-seasonal gardens and gardeners start to ‘decorate’ the garden from the second season onwards. This element becomes more important as the years go by, bringing great pleasure to gardeners and residents alike.

5. Planting day. Planting day is usually held around April-May, when the temperature is warm enough to keep the plants from freezing.  It is very important that the garden teacher is present in the garden on planting day. A basic mistake of beginner gardeners is to overplant their beds, trying to grow everything. Getting the seedlings planted well, at the right distance and professionally is a very important starting event. Planting day is always a very fun, enthusiastic event, when it becomes clear that there will be gardening here, there will be a harvest here, the first season in the garden is starting. Everybody is rushing around their beds, wondering what to plant and where to plant it. It is then that it becomes clear how important it is to draw up a planting plan in advance. By the time the seedlings and seeds are in the beds, there is a little disappointment, the seedlings are too small, few people can see the July and August planting boom. 

The planting day is also the day for planting grasses and flower seeds, and for grassing if the walking surface is grassy.

Once or twice during the season, a gardening teacher comes to the garden, a pre-arranged community event where we talk through plant diseases and pests, like a hospital visit, bed by bed, giving professional advice to the gardener. Of course everyone is clustered around her, listening to her every word.

At the end of the first season, the founder of the garden will leave the garden community and let them go. At the last garden meeting of the year, the community elects new leaders, usually 2-3 people to take over the leadership of the garden. We call it the garden coordination group. The point of community building is that by the end of the process the community is able to run the seasons themselves, they no longer need outside intervention, they have become self-reliant and have elected their own garden leadership.

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A strange article was published

Food from urban agriculture has carbon footprint six times larger than conventional produce, study shows.

I received an article in English about the carbon footprint of urban agriculture and community gardens. The basic thesis of the study is that vegetables grown in urban gardens have six times the average CO2 load of outdoor, large-scale production.

The argument is that the materials used in the construction of gardens (raised beds, walkways, fencing, water systems), the CO2 generated in their production, all add to the CO2 load of the crops, and thus represent a greater environmental burden compared to large-scale industrial agriculture. It has been calculated that the carbon load is six times greater. Of course, the article goes on to look at phenomena such as asparagus transported by plane and the environmental impact of vegetables grown in greenhouses, and finds that urban gardens are better off with a smaller ecological footprint.

One of the main findings of the study:

„On average, food produced through urban agriculture emitted 0.42 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents per serving, six times higher than the 0.07 kg CO2e per serving of conventionally grown produce.”

The other very clever sentence is:

“Most of the climate impacts at urban farms are driven by the materials used to construct them—the infrastructure,” Goldstein said. “These farms typically only operate for a few years or a decade, so the greenhouse gases used to produce those materials are not used effectively. Conventional agriculture, on the other hand, is very efficient and hard to compete with.”

Now, let’s add some practical observations:

Urban gardens and community gardens must be built. There is no such thing as open field cultivation in the city, apart from private gardens. Raised beds should be used in urban gardens because the soil is unsuitable for growing crops. Other built elements of community gardens are: fencing, water systems, walkways, tool storage, sandboxes for children, etc. These also need to be built, and of course have a carbon footprint. Urban parks also need to be built, they also have a carbon footprint, so if we go further along the argument, parks should also be demolished, perhaps concreted over, because building and maintaining parks also has an environmental impact.

Another important aspect is that gardens should look good, be safe and easy to maintain. Garden design is essential, and good quality workmanship is perhaps even more important. Urban gardens are essentially civic urban green spaces, and aesthetic appearance and usability are essential. Most community gardens use a lot of recycled materials in their construction, such as demolished bricks, paving slabs, pallets. All of these had to be manufactured once, which has a carbon footprint, transported to site, which has a carbon footprint, and the garden had to be built, which also has a carbon footprint. Recycling, on the other hand, does not create new emissions, at most during transport. Community gardens are essentially energy-efficient facilities.

The large-scale cultivation mentioned in the article means monocultures, optimised cultivation methods and, above all, huge sizes. And urban agriculture is all about small scale, with no endless arable land and instead individual beds. The article makes the mistake of not including in the CO2 value the CO2 burden of manufacturing and operating agricultural machinery. If we add to this the CO2 burden of the long journey from field to plate, transport, refrigeration and processing, the benefits of large-scale production are immediately not so great. Urban agriculture is all about variety and high biodiversity. In 2023, the Böszi Community Garden had 47 species of plants grown by gardeners, and that’s not counting the variety of species. For example, there were at least 10-12 varieties of tomatoes in the garden. In the supermarket, you can buy one or at most two types of tomatoes, the quality and nutrition of which are far below those of your own garden.

Blog post: Numbers in the Community Gardens

The list of arguments against the study could go on for a long time, but it is unnecessary. The really disturbing thing is that this research talks about negligible amounts of carbon dioxide, when on a global scale it is nothing. To show that urban gardens cost a few molecules of CO2 more than outdoor production, while megatonnes of methane are released from permafrost and deep-sea methane ice, while global transport, aviation, shipping, heating buildings, industry, our very existence, is a burden on the planet, is pathetic. They are taking one negligibly small element and projecting it onto the big picture. Why? Yet again, research that would have been better not done, not moved the world forward at all, a complete end in itself, with worthless results. Or, it all has a distinctly foul smell to it, namely an anti self-sufficiency, anti self-determination attitude. Don’t grow your own food, don’t strive for self-sufficiency, don’t please yourself, instead buy large-scale crops because it’s better and more environmentally conscious than small-scale urban agriculture. Bad taste, a very damaging way of thinking.

I watch the farmers’ protests in Europe, from Germany to the Netherlands to France, and I see something terribly wrong. The misunderstood “eco-consciousness”, this “How dare you?!” mentality, the totally misguided planet-saving, the unprofessional activist attitude, will eventually lead to either nothing to eat or it will be incredibly expensive. I’m telling you now that the hunger riots will mean far more CO2 emissions than the carbon production of community gardens.

Finally, what is missing from the research is how much excess carbon dioxide emissions, such as CO2 exhaled by the authors, were involved in the production of this great research! Now that is waste and pollution!

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Numbers in the community garden

The first season of the Böszi Garden ended. I have made all kinds of summaries and now I would like to present a different approach. What numbers can we put on the garden in the year of the garden’s creation?

There are many different numbers, let’s see some of them:

Number of garden meetings, trainings, garden events: 28 occasions

Municipal consultations, designer meetings, building contractor site visits: 19 occasions

Press releases in figures:

9 articles in the local newspaper Hegyvidék

8 news reports in Hegyvidék Tv

1 article in the Magyar Mezőgazdaság newspaper

1 lecture at the MOME, about the creation of a garden, including the creation of the Böszi garden

7 blog posts, mixed in Hungarian and English (I’m a lazy pig for writing so little, I’ll make up for it.)

I was interviewed by 3 graduate students, mainly about the Böszi garden and how I got involved in garden creation and community gardens.

Crop statistics

We have also done “garden statistics” in other gardens in previous years. The idea is to measure all the vegetables and fruits that were grown in the garden that year. The gardeners themselves keep an online crop diary, and then at the end of the season you can add up how much produce the garden and the beds separately have had that season. This is what “garden statistics” looks like.

böszi community garden crops in 2023

Although five bed holders did not fill in the table, it appears that there was a large harvest of nearly a tonne. With a total of 47 varieties of vegetables and herbs grown in the garden, it seems that many people have already started experimenting with plants in the first season, which has resulted in a diverse garden and crops.

Clearly the most tomatoes produced was 380.9 kg, with 30.6 kg of green tomatoes, good for pickling. This is true for all gardens, tomatoes are the most popular product. In the Böszi garden, the courgettes produced a very good 154.8 kg, followed immediately by the cucumbers 147.4 kg. Although I think they only planted batatas in 2-3 beds, they still came in at 36.5 kg.

Böszi garden crops in the year 2023

This Excel is interesting, Vazul one of the members from the garden has done a very good job of showing the quantity of crops in the beds. Somewhere very funny. In the Böszi garden the average yield was 29 kg per bed.

Aggregated crops of the beds

How much does this mean in HUF? I started to look for prices for the harvests, but there is a lot of variation, in fact I could only add up the main crops, which came to nearly 2 million forints. In other words, in lower terms, they produced nearly sixty thousand forints per bed, which is more like how much money the gardeners saved by growing what they would otherwise have bought in the shop or market. By comparison, the size of the beds is 6+1 square metres, so it is not at all an underestimate of what can be made from an urban garden. And that’s not to mention the quality, the community, this whole phenomenon on Böszörményi út.

The gardeners also had their costs, this year if I remember correctly the annual bed rent was 5000 Ft, they bought their own cattle manure (2500 Ft/bag, roughly one bag per bed), seeds and seedlings, and their own tools.

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Planting day in the Böszi garden (Böszörményi úti közösségi kert)

Yesterday we were very lucky with the weather, Saturday was rain-free and we could plant. On Thursday evening the seedlings were delivered, this was organised by the community itself, very good, there will be many more in the coming months. The home-grown seedlings were strong enough for planting, everything was in place to get the plants in the ground on the agreed day. Many had already prepared their planting plans for their beds, and Zsuzsa came to give advice to all the garden members on planting and positioning the plants. With 34 beds, Zsuzsa had a lot to do, she went to each bed and with the gardener she put the seedlings in the right place, it was like a kind of weird chess where the seedlings are the pieces and the bed is the horseshoe shaped board. Although it’s not chess, it’s more suited to the game of Go.

The day begins
The first step was to move the soil and work in the cattle manure. Luckily it had rained the day before, the soil was soft and easy to work with.

That’s it! First you have to place the plants on the bed, like pieces on a chess board, imagine how big each one will grow, and if they will push each other away.
The mayor of the district also dropped by.
I imagine that by July, August, these high beds will all be filled with mature plants, walking through the beds will be like a better kind of labyrinth.
We also need the stink plant, it’s a good protection plant and it will be beautiful.

On the side of the garden around this strip will be the common cultivated areas that we tend to divide up, so the very spreading plants like zucchini or squashes will go here, and then we’ll try to get them to spread up the strip. You can see the pallets in the background, we’ll be using them to build more garden furniture in the near future.

In parallel with the planting, the garden keys were distributed, so now each garden member has their own key and can go to the garden whenever they want.  We have also divided up the common cultivated areas, although this is still a bit ad-hoc, it will be finalised at the next garden meeting. We have also put together the compost bins, but compost education is still to be done, this will be done soon.

Now it’s going to be a week of lousy weather, with rain and overcast skies, I’m a bit worried about how the plants will cope.

The more important tasks for the coming period will be to build pallet furniture, figure out the garden sign, the sponsor sign and the garden visitor’s garden sign. Now at the planting day many people came in and looked around asking questions, we need a Visitors Rules sign. Soon the sun sails will be put up in the garden, we need them very much because in summer we need shade over the sandpit and the community area, the garden is very wet, it gets hot as hell in the summer heat.

We still need to buy some hoses for the garden, maybe some basins under the taps, and one of the garden members promised a tarpaulin for the sandpit, so the local cats have already found the garden.

We will be planting a lot more: there will be a flower area by the entrance and other places. What we need to work on a lot is the grating, where we plan to put a flower meadow to cover the sloping walls reinforced with jute netting. In any case I have sprinkled sunflower and ornamental sunflower seeds, if they survive and sprout they will make a pretty picture.

It was the first real gardening day, we’ve made a lot of progress, but it’s still the beginning, there’s a lot to do.

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Community gardens in Hungary – research

Dear Reader,

The attached article based on a research carried out into the area of mediation which is a peaceful conflict resolution method, as well as several externalities exerted by people in connection with a community garden in Hungary. The espected reader can get a short insight into the misterious world of fragrant spices, delicious vegetables and fruits, and explore mainly the human characteristics of this special milieu.

I definitely would like to thank the people supported my work in choosing potential professional responders and community gardens, gave pieces of advice, and shared their own experiences: Gábor Rosta, Ágnes Szabó and Mária Nagy.

On the other hand I definitely want to thank all the people participated in this research and gave valuable pieces of information or in any way contributed to my work.

Gabriella Lovász Ph.D.

Lovász Gabriella közösségi kertész, és persze tudományos kutató is, ezt a kutatást tavaly végezte a magyarországi közösségi kertekben.

Download (PDF, 231KB)

kertek találkozója

 

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Power to the people

Britain’s villages are in the front line in a new battle over energy, with investors seeking big profits. But this is not about fracking for shale gas – this row is about hydro-electric power.

Supporters believe that a network of small hydro-electric generators in village streams and rivers could provide enough electricity to power one in 20 households.

Elég jó cikk arról, hogy megpróbálnak önellátóak lenni.

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Waterwheel on a 17th century tudor building

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