Gold & Silver Forum - Homegrown is now red hot

Homegrown is now red hot

All those freshly cleared lots around the city's neighborhoods might seem ideal for new community gardens. But the city says it's a bit more complicated.

When avid gardener Mark Jacobson heard about ramped-up efforts by the city of Minneapolis to encourage urban farming and community gardens, he wanted to do his part.

Jacobson hoped to join with two or three neighbors and plant small gardens on a city-owned vacant lot next to his home in the 2500 block of Plymouth Avenue N.

"We're taxpayers, and this is public land that's just sitting there," he said. "It wouldn't be too much trouble to get something started."

Or so he thought.

But when city officials told him he would need to sign a one-year lease and get insurance, he balked.

Most off-putting, he said, was a requirement that he be affiliated with an organized group, such as a church or neighborhood association, to start a garden.

"I don't like the idea of people telling me, 'This is what a community garden is. You have to have a chairman and have to have rules.' That's not gonna work. It's impromptu. I'm an avid gardener, and I'm just trying to get some people interested in gardening."

Community gardens and the city initiatives that support them have grown more popular than at any time since perhaps World War II. Meanwhile, growing numbers of foreclosures and tear-downs are leaving vacant lots around the city.

But taking advantage of the two trends to add to the 100-plus community gardens, large and small, that already dot the metro area won't be easy.

What Jacobson wanted is really the focus of initiatives such as Homegrown Minneapolis -- an early-stage policymaking effort to promote ways to have more fresh, locally grown food sold and distributed in Minneapolis.

Small, privately maintained gardens on city-owned land are well-intentioned but not the direction the community garden initiative is headed, said Karin Berkholtz, community planning supervisor for Minneapolis and a member of the Homegrown Minneapolis steering committee.

"One of the things we never anticipated was the groundswell of interest in gardening," Berkholtz said. "We were also not prepared that everyone would look first to city-owned properties as being the answer."

Currently, the policy of the Minneapolis Department of Community Planning and Economic Development is to renew one-year contracts for existing community gardens, unless there is a pending land sale or development for the site. Requests for new gardens are reviewed on a case-by-case basis and weighed against other potential uses for property, such as housing.

Rent for the land is determined by an appraiser's assessment, and tenants are required to maintain general liability insurance during the lease.

In Jacobson's case, city officials are already considering a prior request for an artist live/work proposal for the lot on Plymouth Avenue, Berkholtz said.

While barriers may seem high to starting a garden on city land, that's because planning is needed to make them successful, Berkholtz said. When planned properly, they can last for decades -- like the Dowling Community Garden, at 46th Avenue and 36th Street in south Minneapolis, which is now in its 66th year.

"One of the things with community gardens is that interest in them ebbs and flows," she said. "What happens when an individual or an organization either loses interest or loses the capacity to maintain the property?"

The roadblocks to creating community gardens are not limited to private citizens, or Minneapolis.

In Edina, a group of youth in the YEA Corps launched a plan to create a garden in the city's Chowen Park, which was approved by the city's Park Board but awaits debate by the City Council. Because it, too, is not a large community garden, it will be closely analyzed, said Mary Helen Franze, executive director of YEA Corps.

Kirsten Saylor, executive director of Gardening Matters, an independent organization dedicated to community gardening, said it's important to make sure the community is invested in a garden project.

"If you don't start them smart and have good planning and community involvement, they're more likely to fail and less likely to benefit the entire community," she said.

"It's really easy to dig. It's easy to start something. But it's much harder to maintain it. "

Abby Simons • 612-673-4921

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