Helpful Garden Links
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Home Garden Links | School Garden Links | Community Garden Links
Home Garden Links
helpful tips for the
home gardener
San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project was formed to strengthen the local food movement in the San Diego region and to create a sustainable urban-rural partnership that brings healthy local food to our communities and sustains the working landscapes and people that feed us.
San Diego Food Not Lawns is a grassroots group based in San Diego, California (USA) and focused on "cultivating an edible future" and working together to offer information, facilitate communication, and otherwise act and effect local change regarding a variety of food and land related issues.
San Diego County Master Gardeners Association is one of the least-known treasure troves of information in San Diego County. Over one-hundred Master Gardeners provide home gardening and pest control information through out the county, FREE to the public. The Master Gardeners are volunteers trained and supervised by Farm Advisor Vincent Lazaneo, of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE). The mission of the UCCE is to conduct research on issues impacting the county, and to put the results of that research to good use. Cooperative Extension offices are located in counties throughout the nation. The Cooperative Extension Office in the county of San Diego is called the Farm and Home Advisor Department.
Nan Sterman is a leading authority on gardening in California's dry Mediterranean Climate.
Small Plot INtensive farming: SPIN is a non-technical, easy-to-learn and inexpensive-to-implement farming system that makes it possible to earn significant income from land bases under an acre in size.
Kitchen Gardener’s International: KGI's mission is to empower individuals, families, and communities to achieve greater levels of food self-reliance through the promotion of kitchen gardening, home-cooking, and sustainable local food systems.
Organic Home Gardener: Over the past 24 years, master gardener Lee O'Hara has turned his front and back yards into raised planting beds. At first it was just with the intention of creating retaining walls, but soon escalated into growing vegetables organically.
Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program offers suggestions for a wide variety of methods to control pests in your garden.
School Garden Links
helpful links for the school gardener
San Diego Regional School Garden Resource Center
California School Garden Network
California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom (CFAITC)
California Department of Education
School Garden Resource Packet
California Integrated Waste
Management Board
National Gardening Association
The Science of Gardening
(created by the San Francisco Exploratorium)
The Edible Schoolyard – Berkeley, California
San Diego County Chilhood Obesity Initiative
San Diego's Explorer Middle School Garden Blog
Explorer Elementary Charter School’s Teaching Garden is an opportunity for teachers to link inside learning to outside experiences. All garden experiences are integrated into Explorer’s rich curriculum, from our Social-Emotional learning curriculum, to literature, math, science, art, and more. Each class at Explorer has a raised bed garden plot, and some classes are using other areas of the garden, as well, to create butterfly gardens and native plant gardens, and areas for the peace and beauty of art projects in the garden.
Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution
This food revolution is about saving America's health by changing the way you eat. It's not just a TV show, it's a movement for you, your family and your community. If you care about your kids and their future take this revolution and make it your own. Educate yourself about food and cooking. Find out what your child is eating at school. Make only a few small changes and magical things will happen. Switching from processed to fresh food will not only make you feel better but it will add years to your life.
Community Garden Links
helpful links for the community gardener
To see a list of all of San Diego's Community Gardens, click here
Take a short survey about Community Gardens to help the Master Gardeners assess the needs and desires of folks interested in Community Gardeners.
City of San Diego Community Garden Ordinance (download .pdf file)
This is an exercise in dinosaur thinking. With collective effort, let's work to streamline this process and make it easier to create community gardens throughout San Diego. Food production in our communities needs to be encouraged at all levels!
Local organizations working on Community Gardens and Community Garden issues
Community Farms and Gardens' mission is to grow community farms and gardens by connecting people to the land, as well as to the plants, animals and other organisms that make up the environment that encompasses us; by planting seeds and seedlings, saplings and trees, seeds as ideas, seeds of change, seeds of success and progress; by growing communities in health and vitality, communities that grow closer as they grow things together on the farms and in the gardens that they share.
International Rescue Committee, San Diego Each year, more than 400 refugees arrive from East Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. IRC San Diego's multi-lingual staff work closely with refugees from the day they arrive to the day they become US citizens. Their many programs ensure that refugee families are successfully resettled in our community. They are creating the New Roots Community Farm to reconnect refugees with their agricultural roots and ease the transition to a new country. Crops will reflect those grown in refugee’s country of origin.
National Groups working to grow more Community Gardens
Eat the View is a campaign to plant high-impact food gardens in high-profile places. We asked the Obamas to lead the way by replanting a kitchen garden on the First Lawn and they heard our call!
La Vida Locavore is the blog for anyone whose crazy life includes planting, growing, weeding, fertilizing, raising, picking, harvesting, processing, cooking, baking, making, serving, buying, selling, distributing, transporting, composting, organizing around, lobbying about, writing about, thinking about, talking about, playing with, and eating food!
Community Garden Resources
Community Garden Startup Handbook Nice 67-page handbook created by Wasach Community Garden group near Salt Lake City. It has everything you need to know about starting a community garden!
American Community Gardening Association The Mission of the American Community Gardening Association is to build community by increasing and enhancing community gardening and greening across the United States and Canada.
ACGA is a bi-national nonprofit membership organization of professionals, volunteers and supporters of community greening in urban and rural communities. The Association recognizes that community gardening improves people’s quality of life by providing a catalyst for neighborhood and community development, stimulating social interaction, encouraging self-reliance, beautifying neighborhoods, producing nutritious food, reducing family food budgets, conserving resources and creating opportunities for recreation, exercise, therapy and education.
How to Make a Community Garden PHS’s Philadelphia Green program has compiled a *how-to manual* to help city agencies, community-based organizations and block groups reclaim vacant lots in the city. Reclaiming Vacant Lots: A Philadelphia Green Guide outlines a basic "clean & green" approach to managing vacant land, which involves clearing debris, planting grass and trees and installing fences. The manual also provides information on settling ownership issues, developing a site plan, and creating a long-term maintenance strategy. Its free and downloadable.
Articles about Community Gardens around the Country
The Incredible, Edible Front Lawn, Earthview's campaign to plant visible public properties with food, Time, July 1, 2008
Community Gardens: Growing Food Brings People Together. Article from Common Dreams Newsletter on the nationwide resurgence of Community Gardens.
San Francisco Firm Harvests Potential of Unused Land, article from the San Francisco Chronicle about growing food in one's yard. SFGate, June 23, 2008.
Lettuce on the White House Lawn, editorial by Ellen Goodman about converting public spaces to food production, from the International Herald Tribune (New York Times), July 4, 2008