The “greening” of condominium living is expanding to the landscape, where shared fruit and vegetable gardens get residents involved and add beauty to the property. They’re not the Garden of Eden, but from small to large, they provide a bountiful harvest year-round for the resident homeowners.

Shared gardens appeal to today’s condo dwellers—often families seeking a more self-sustaining lifestyle, and a way to teach their children that fruit can be grown at home, and broccoli doesn’t grow in plastic bags. Experts say real estate value rises in HOAs with shared gardens. Older condos, particularly those with unused or rundown green space, can benefit from this approach to property use. With so much interest, community architects are paying attention. And, for those just starting out, there’s a lot of technical assistance.

“Community gardens are a great way for neighbors to meet and collaborate on a mutually beneficial project,” says Amy Pennington, a Seattle-based gardener and author of Urban Pantry: Tips and Recipes for a Thrifty, Sustainable and Seasonal Kitchen and the upcoming book Apartment Gardening. “Community engagement is one of the most important benefits a living space can offer. Gardens are a great place for neighbors to come together, and as they are ever-changing across the seasons, there is always a need for collaboration. Condo gardens are a huge perk!”

Updating “Victory Gardens”

John Norquist, president and CEO of the national Congress for the New Urbanism, compares this trend with a return to past eras, calling it “... a revival, in a way.” During World War II, he notes, there were Victory Gardens. “You even have a television show (The Victory Garden on PBS) based on them; there were vegetable gardens everywhere: on rooftops, in window boxes and yards. People even rented land along public rights of way. New urbanists like to retrieve old ideas, brush ‘em up and use them again. Now that people are starting to think of food production as an amenity, converting an old courtyard or parking lot to gardens makes land available [to them],” Norquist says.

“An older condominium with just a parking lot and some grass berms is kind of boring," Norquist continues, "so anything that makes these more interesting is adding an amenity that younger people, in their 20s and 30s, are looking for.” A typical 40-unit condominium in suburban New Jersey, for instance, might well provide ample garden space. “In a garden that may be 30 by 40 [feet], you can grow a lot of sweet corn, snap peas, onions and peppers.”

You can actually have a very small space and just grow some basic greens and herbs,” says Susan Haake, a landscape designer with Live Oak Landscape in Piscataway. "I think the best way to do a community garden is the American way, which is to sell individual plots to people to take care of themselves. You will need a group to manage the garden, but the plots will be taken care of by individuals. You plant, you harvest and take care of your own plot. Wagner Farm [in Warren Township] is an excellent example of this —so is Rutgers Gardens in New Brunswick."

A Patch of Green

So how does one set up a community garden? It’s generally not terribly expensive or difficult, say the pros. It requires the developer or homeowners association to really take the initiative to set up a local garden club—someone to manage the space and develop some ‘neighborly’ pressure.' Essentially, it means carving out a piece of common area and giving it over to the residents to farm.

Jan Zientek, senior program coordinator for Agriculture and Resource Management at the Cooperative Extension office of Essex County in Roseland has been working to promote, create and support community gardens for the last 10 years as part of his job with the Rutgers Urban Gardening program. According to Zientek, "The space needed for a garden is determined by what the gardener(s) are attempting to accomplish. If they are new to gardening, for the first season I recommend a small plot with enough space for vegetables that are interesting and/or desirable. Two or three tomato plants will provide more than enough fresh tomatoes for a family of four. Other popular plants are cucumber, eggplant, basil, cilantro, lettuce and peppers. Some apartment dwellers with no access to real land are able to grow vegetables in containers (like plastic buckets, clay pots, etc.) In a couple of the new community gardens that were started last year, the gardeners were given a 4' x 8' plot. Small-scale rooftop gardens are possible too."

"You need a plan,” says Susan Hadden, a member of the Environmental, Health and Safety Department of Johnson & Johnson in Raritan and a founder of the Raritan Campus Employee Garden in 2010. Hadden stresses that while access to and participation in the Campus Employee Garden is restricted to those working on the J&J campus, the garden functions in much the same way as an HOA garden.

"I would highly recommend doing an interest survey before getting started to see if people want to participate," says Hadden. "I find that about a third of the people, who say they will, actually do participate. There are many ways you can organize it. In our garden at work, people tend their own plots and can grow whatever they like as long as it's within the garden guidelines. (We wrote a handbook of rules, advice, references, ideas, etc.) We marked out the plots with stakes and strings before the season began and assigned them to individual gardeners. They do the work, they get the produce from their own plots. There are many, many ways to organize and run a garden, though."

Owner Participation is Key

Regardless of whether your community garden is in the back forty of your HOA or on the rooftop, Zientek says that participation from the community as a whole is vital for the project to be a success—and that participation can take many forms beyond actual digging in the dirt.

"The first step is identifying collaborators," says Zientek. "It's a lot of work to establish and maintain a community garden, so you need to have people who share the vision. That's usually the hardest part. I strongly recommend establishing a garden committee with bylaws, defined roles for members and a mission statement for the project. You can go to the American Community Garden Association website at www.communitygarden.org for very good guidelines."

And it's okay not to have all the answers at first, Zientek continues—although education is an important component of any garden project. "Unless you grew up gardening with your parents or grandparents, you cannot assume that everyone will know how to garden," he says. "Last year in the two new community gardens started in Essex County, a lot of new gardeners discovered mid-season that just reading about gardening was insufficient. Many had no idea when or how to harvest their tomatoes; during my site visits I found an alarming amount of tomatoes rotting on the ground or plant." To educate fledgling gardeners, Zientek offers a three-hour seminar to groups interesting in starting a new community garden project.

And, says Zientek, don't forget the flower-lovers. "While most community gardens are devoted to vegetable production, color and fragrance enhance both a garden and our lives, so having some flowers in the garden may actually attract beneficial insects and animals to your garden."

Start Small – and Cover Your Bases

Most urban agriculture pros advise would-be community gardeners to bear three things in mind when establishing a community garden: start small; consider the land's best use, and build on individual talents.

Don't think, ‘We want to have a farm,' say the experts. Start smaller—with 'We want to have a carrot patch.’ There's a lot of knowledge, experience and skill goes into farming, and it can't all be learned overnight, or from reading a book, as Zientek mentions earlier.

All of the experts contacted for this article agree that both the entire garden and its individual plots should be master-planned, if even just loosely. Someone wishing to grow corn shouldn't have their plot situated so the growing stalks overshade another gardener's low-lying crop, for example. Is there a part of the allotted space that is better suited to one kind of planting than another? Get people thinking together about how to use the land, say the veterans. Any master plan can be changed as time and experience lend wisdom to the idea, but a plan should exist before the first spade-full of soil is turned.

Also, respect that some folks just won’t want to farm but may want to support the garden in other ways. Maybe they'll want to purchase the fresh produce from their neighbors' plots, or perhaps they'll suggest another role that doesn't involve hoes and weeds, but which helps promote and improve the garden for the entire community.

It's also a good idea to consider the legal angle of growing produce onsite for human consumption, whether by HOA residents or outsiders. "We have become a rather litigious society," says Zientek, "so there is always some sort of legal risk involved in a community garden both on private and public property. Some of this can be mitigated by the use of gardener contracts that spell out both the responsibilities and limitations of the gardener and community garden. There are examples of gardener agreements or contracts at the American Community Garden Association website that an HOA's attorney could use as a starting point and then include any exclusions or waivers to limit the association's liability. For example, in South Orange the gardener receives a 'license' for their plot, because the South Orange village council determined that a license provided stronger protection than a garden lease."

"There's very little risk involved with community gardens when the garden is located on private property with the owner’s permission, says Craig Jenkins-Sutton of Chicago-based Toparius Urban Garden & Floral Design. "With that said, having something in writing from the condo board giving permission for the use of the space is definitely recommended. It's also recommended that individual members sign a waiver releasing the HOA from fault if a back is strained or an ankle gets twisted. These waivers are easy to find online. If the garden is going to be on a porch, deck or roof it also makes sense to have an engineer check the structure to make sure that it can handle the weight and that the project and building are compliant with all local codes. Calling your insurance company is also recommended. The insurer can add the garden onto the rider typically at no additional cost as long as all appropriate local ordinances are properly followed."

"As far as a profit," Jenkins-Sutton continues, "unless the garden is selling its extra produce, there should be no problem. If the garden does decide to sell produce, I would recommend setting up a 'maintenance' account for the proceeds. This money can be used for garden upgrades like an irrigation system, compost bins, shared tools, or buying new seeds and plants."

With the growing tide of "green" living, community gardening and other environmentally-connected activities are becoming more and more popular. Not only do these projects benefit the individuals who actively cultivate plants and flowers on their own plot of land but they also enrich the community associations they call home. With some pre-planning and a committed group of gardeners, just about any HOA can have its own little green jewel-box.

Ann Connery Frantz is a freelance writer and a contributor to the New Jersey Cooperator. Additional reporting by Editorial Assistant David Chiu.