How Our Community Garden Works

How The Garden Works

The community garden has several goals:

To teach the residents of Pell City about gardening to grow their own local foods
To expose the younger generations to gardening and where their food comes from, making it normal to see fresh food grown
To provide a reliable source of fresh, local produce for food banks and food ministries serving the needy in the Pell City area
To promote new garden techniques, best practices, and healthier lifestyles by providing training workshops at the garden
To facilitate healthy outdoor social opportunities that encourages communication and cooperation between residents of diverse backgrounds.

To accomplish these goals, the community garden will operate in partnership with local organizations such as the churches, volunteer groups, schools, and others that will use garden plots to teach. Those using plots are asked to provide a portion of the produce raised to food banks and food ministries that serve the needy residents of our area, providing them access to healthy food on a regular basis. By having a community garden in the heart of our city, located in a public park, and visible to all, this will enable our younger generations to begin seeing gardening as normal and not just a rarity worthy of field-trips. The more normal and acceptable it is for children to see fresh food being grown and consumed, the higher the likelihood that they will make healthy eating choices, especially if they are also engaged by organizations working to teach this skill as well.

Partnerships with teaching organizations such as the Cooperative Extension System and the St. Clair Master Gardeners will provide the opportunity for the public to learn new gardening techniques, best practices such as organic methods or proper composting, and other trainings to help promote healthy lifestyles. These can include rain-water barrel classes, straw-bale exhibition gardens, proper preservation and canning techniques, organic pest control, and many other ways to build a healthy seed-to-plate household.

Garden Timeline Status

As you may be able to tell by driving by the area, this community garden is a budding project, not yet in full swing. This is a project in the works, begun in late Fall 2013 by a group of Pell City residents. Below is our current timeline for establishing the garden. To keep updated, follow us on Facebook, where we'll post updates on the garden's status and events.

Implementation Phase - Nov 2014 - March 2015 - After we secured a space at the Avondale Park, we began working heavily to solicit in-kind services and materials to build the garden, including volunteers to install hardscape and raised beds. As Spring arrived, volunteer days were hosted to plant community areas and for those using raised beds to plant their first crop. This phase included in-kind solicitations, reaching out to organizations who wish to use a plot, and volunteer opportunities.
Operational Phase - Our goal was to have the first crop planted around Spring 2016 and be fully operational by Summer 2016, with workshop schedules and work-days in place. The garden will be expanded with additional raised beds each season as demand dictates. We hope to also install a community orchard space and partner with the Farmer's Market to locate next to the garden, with booth space for those raising food to be able to sell excess (after donations to pantries and their own needs).

Community Garden Plots

With the goals of the community garden being primarily to teach the methods, techniques and ideas needed for our residents to learn to raise their own local healthy food, our primary focus in the beginning will be to partner our plots with organizations that will use the plot to teach these methods to their membership. These organizations may be church groups, school groups, nature clubs, FFA groups, special interest groups, scouting groups, and others.

There will be community plots available to individuals and families who would know enough to get started and want to learn more while also gardening immediately. Garden mentors may be available to assist individuals, as volunteer time allows. As the strength of the garden network grows and as more residents are taught using the organization plots, it is our hope that family/individual plot usage will become a more primary focus. We also would love to see more families and individuals learning at the community garden, and taking that knowledge to start a home garden or school garden!

If you're interested in having an organization or family/individual plot, use the contact page to reach out and let us know your interest. Plots will be assigned on a first-come first-served basis, and there will only be approximately 25 plots in the initial phases.

Community Public Spaces and Opportunities

Given the limited number of plots available and that the community garden will be designed to be truly public, there will be areas of the garden that are for general public usage. Several garden areas will be dedicated to raising produce for the general public. Anyone can work on these areas and harvest these areas. We ask that you only take what you need, as this area is for everyone. Other areas will be dedicated to beautification, and these areas are also welcome to be weeded and tended by anyone on-site. There will be signage to indicate plots that are not for public usage.

Workshops and training classes are open to all, not just those who hold plots. These schedules should be posted on the website (once we reach that phase, there will be a page dedicated to schedules) as well as on-site.

Later phases call for the installation of a small children's area, social spaces, pollinator gardens, and community orchard space - all of which will be open to anyone to use.

As the gardens grow, more raised beds will be added as well as more community spaces.