2021 Placer County Community Gardens Review

A healthy community garden that is able to adapt and pursue their goals in a sustainable way can be, and are, driving forces for health in the communities and landscapes they serve. And yet, the Placer Resource Conservation District, an organization dedicated to helping people help the land for the purposes of nurturing the land toward health and productivity, knew little about the community gardening activity occurring in Placer County; who they are, how they operate, and what they do. We wanted to find out!

Thanks to an Urban Ag and Community Initiative Grant made available by the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD) and the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), for nearly a year, we set out to learn what we could about Placer County’s community gardens. In total we met or talked with 14 of the 17 known community gardens in Placer County which included hours of community garden exploration and touring, meetings with community garden leaders, walking the community garden grounds, touching the soil, hearing stories, and an online survey conducted to collect and review the information gathered. In the end, we gathered only some of what we learned and compiled it into the 2021 Placer County Community Gardens Review.

Because a document for community gardens like this, to our knowledge, did not exist for Placer County, our main purpose for putting together this review was simply to hear community garden leaders, discover what they are up to, and share what we learned with the general public. The perspectives we chose to look through were operational, organizational, and relational in nature. Meaning, we wondered how community gardens relate to those around them, how they were organized, and what they did to function and achieve their goals.

In this review, Placer RCD collected information from in-person visits and tours of community gardens as well as data collected from an online survey, to present a windshield survey, or review, of community gardening in Placer County.

The topics covered include a basic overview of community gardens, organization and leadership, education and programming, garden infrastructure, accessibility, art, conservation practices, growing, relationship to its neighborhood, relationship to the food insecure community, and then finishing with thoughts community gardens share about the future.

The contents can be split into three main sections: 1) what’s happening in the garden, 3) what’s happening outside of the garden as a result of what’s happening inside it, and 3) what’s going to happen? The format is that of a survey with statistics followed, when needed, by anecdotal observations and limited analysis or conclusions.

A person walking through a community garden surrounded by vegetable and corn. — Community Garden Plots at the Senior Garden in Auburn, CA

A picture of a path in a community garden on a hillside. — Community Garden Plots at the Senior Garden in Auburn, CA

The topics were chosen, in-part, due to early conversations with community garden leaders and in-part from input offered by the Urban Agriculture Advisory Committee; a committee of local stakeholders invited by the Placer Resource Conservation District, to advise and consult on matters related to urban agriculture, diversity and inclusivity, and other related matters. The other influence affecting the topics was our own office especially on the topic of conservation, education and programming, infrastructure, and growing.

Some topics that you would think would be in here are not. For example, in the infrastructure section, there is no mention of raised garden beds. It’s not that they aren’t important or a large expense for a community garden – it’s just that nobody really talked about it. But there were some topics that weren’t discussed unless prompted. For example, we asked about artwork in the garden, we talked about their relationship to the ecological community, and so on.

Finally, please read this review as an initial look into community gardens in Placer County. This is an entry-point into something that has potential for evolution. It is a resource to guide conversations and action as it relates to community gardens in Placer County.