How will your garden change your community and people’s lives?
This is your garden vision. Having one can unify your garden group, help set your priorities, and provide a touchstone as you move forward. A vision statement is a clear, concise, specific phrase that can become the tagline for your garden, but bullet-points can be enough to get you started.
The vision process can be completed in a single, well-run meeting with the garden stakeholders. At the meeting, provide everyone the opportunity to share their personal goals for the garden. By writing everyone’s goals onto a chalkboard or butcher paper you can keep them visible and make sure no ideas are lost.
Here are some key questions to ask yourselves:
- What is the purpose of the garden? For example: a community-building project, to grow food for a food pantry, to demonstrate a productive use of vacant land
- What kind of garden is it? Just food? Individual plots, collective growing (sometimes called a Community Farm), both?
- Who is the garden for? Just the gardeners? Certain special populations such as youth, people with physical challenges, seniors?
These questions will generate a huge list of ideas with a lot of overlap from which you can identify a few key goals for the garden. You can stop here, or continue towards crafting these key goals into a generalized vision statement, such as: To bring fresh produce, personal connections, constructive youth activities, and beautification to the neighborhood through community gardening.
