Gardens

In the nine growing seasons since Community Gardens of Chester County was founded, we have sought to create opportunities for low-income county residents of all ages, races, cultures, and abilities to grow food together and beautify their neighborhoods; and in less than a decade we have successfully organized more than 50 neighborhood-based gardening and greening endeavors in underserved communities across Chester County.

Our focus for the 2008 growing season will be the development of teaching gardens in four major population centers: Coatesville, Downingtown, Kennett Square, and West Chester.

Each teaching garden will consist of a sufficient number of raised beds, approximately three by ten feet in size, to provide at least one bed per household for ten or more low-income families, as well as for several experienced volunteers who will grow food in beds of their own and serve as mentors to novice gardeners among residents of the neighborhood.

Through ties with smaller gardening and greening projects in the surrounding community, each will serve as a distribution hub for seeds, plants, hardware and tools donated to Community Gardens of Chester County, as well as a convenient location for demonstrations and workshops designed for gardeners at those smaller sites, its resident gardeners and members of the general public, and offered in close cooperation with the Chester County Master Gardener program of Penn State Cooperative Extension.