Larchway Community Garden

CGS sits on a large, open lot in the middle of a rapidly developing neighborhood.  "Air Condos" are filling the area with beautiful homes that have very small yards.  To help people of our community have a chance to be a part of nature, we opened the Larchway Community Garden.  Our garden offers rentable plots where people from our neighborhood grow their own organic produce.  We also have a large plot that our volunteers maintain.  The food grown in this garden is donated to the Lynnwood Food Bank.

For details, contact

Art Flower - Organic Gardening

THE BENEFITS OF COMMUNITY GARDENING

Compiled by Mary Reese

Community gardening brings benefits to individuals, neighborhoods, communities and the cities they are part of through nurturing minds and souls.

Individual benefits

  • Community gardening is an active pursuit yielding fresh food. 
  • By growing some of their own food, individuals and families have access to fresh, nutritious food.
  • Because it involves physical activity, community gardening promotes physical fitness and health.

Learning

  • Learning to grow plants and how God designed their growth is mentally stimulating and adds to an individual's knowledge and expertise.
  • Because organic gardening is a knowledge-based system of gardening rather than one based on quick fixes, it encourages learning in the community gardens in which it is used.
  • Community gardens are often used by community education, churches, schools and universities as learning venues. 
  • Gardens are used for community education such as waste minimization and the recycling of wastes through composting and mulching.

Social benefits

  • Community gardening is a social activity involving shared decision making, problem solving and negotiation, increasing these skills among gardeners. 
  • As places where people come together with a common purpose, community gardens are places where people get to socialize with others and appreciate God's creations.
  • As social venues, community gardens can be used to build a sense of community and belonging.

Urban improvement

  • Community gardens ‘re-green' vacant lots and bring vegetation diversity to public open space and other areas, making them a useful tool for urban improvement.
  • By diversifying the use of open space and creating the opportunity for passive and active recreation, community gardens improve the urban environment.
  • The diversity of plant types found in community gardens provides habitat for urban wildlife, increasing their value for improving the natural environment.

Improving organizational practice

  • Local and state government organizations cooperating with community gardeners can improve relations with citizens and, by cooperating with each other, can improve organizational performance.
  • Community gardens can demonstrate local government policy, such as waste recycling, and community development.
  • Cooperation between government and citizens can strengthen civil society.
  • Local neighbors can be encouraged by God's love in an environment they may not have been exposed to before.