Missoula's Community
Gardens
Northside Gardeners grow a wide
variety of crops. |
Garden plots are sold out for the 2008 growing season!
Neighborhood-based community gardens provide many benefits
to Missoula residents, including: household garden plots;
access to tools and advice; and beautiful places where families
and neighbors gather to enjoy growing healthy, delicious food.
Community Gardens are supported in part by United Way, and many individual donors. Cost is $25 for
the season plus a $15 clean-up deposit.
> Specific Garden Information
Community gardens are a well-established way of helping low-income
people meet their own needs for healthy food. Families without
yard space of their own can rent a small plot to grow their
own vegetables.
Community gardens are working vibrant green spaces shared
by neighborhood residents and the public. We locate them in
low-income neighborhoods, which tend to be very urbanized,
and they specifically serve people without access to their
own (open space) land.
Community gardens are an oasis of beauty
and peace.
Community gardens and greening projects work to affect change
at the heart of where change is needed most: in low-income
neighborhoods. They are developed by the people who live there,
promoting a shift to the gardeners as “owners”
and leaders of projects.
Research and our experience clearly
show that community gardeners make more use of gardens in
their immediate neighborhoods. So, while we have opportunities
to increase plots at existing gardens, our preference is to
add new locations in low-income neighborhoods.
Specific Garden Information:
 ASUM
Community Gardens Garden Organizer: Staci Short, (207)337-5259, asumgarden@yahoo.com
Location: Behind student housing on Higgins Avenue,
one block before Pattee Canyon Road. Turn into student housing
and go behind the apartments to the dirt road leading to the
greenhouses.
Students have preference in garden plots. There are food aid
plots for the Volunteers
for Veggies Program.
Meadow Hill/Flagship School and Community GardenGarden Organizer: Betsy Defries, 207.1117
Location: 4210 S. Reserve St, at the end of 24th Street.
This garden has 15 plots for lease and uses a small number
of volunteers, in collaboration with the Flagship
program at Meadowhill School.
Orchard Gardens Community Gardens and Mini-Farm
Garden Organizer: Sarah Bortis, 728.8835
Location: This garden is located at homeWORD's affordable housing site, just west of Reserve on 210 N. Grove Street.
This is a unique partnership melding affordable housing and food security issues.
This site host community garden plots and a CSA mini-farm.
 Northside
Community Garden Garden Organizer: Contact Tim Hall, 550.3663
Location: Cooley and Holmes / Bus- Route 3
Plots are very popular with the Northside residents and usually
go fast.
Greg Price, River Road Organizer |
River Road Community Garden and Neighborhood Farm Garden Organizer: Greg Price, 240-3848
Location: 1697 River Road / Bus- Route 9
Very large area with lots of garden plots for lease, food
aid plots, and home to Grubshed,
a CSA program.
Needs: 4-6 volunteers for every shift plus one big workday
a month with 10+ volunteers
Second Street Garden
Garden Organizer: Tim Hall, 550.3663
Location: 1270 Second St. West
This garden is in partnership with the neighborhood where this garden is located.
Basic ingredients of a community garden:
- On-site tools so gardeners can walk to the site without
having to carry tools. Also, gardeners don’t have
to own their own tools.
- Water provided for irrigation.
- Community spaces. Herb and flower gardens, children’s
gardens and other shared areas are common elements.
- Amenities such as a picnic table, a shady spot or a play
area add greatly to the garden space. We make sure all our
sites are kid-friendly and good family places.
- Rules or Guidelines: All of the gardens have them. They
address issues such as abandoned plots, weeds, parking or
watering restrictions when applicable.
- We are kid friendly!
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