Garden Communities for Good Neighbors, Community and Growing Food
AKA Agrihoods, Garden Communities are a Growing Thing!
We are loving this concept of garden communities, and bet you will too! Also known as Agrihoods, this can include neighborhoods with community gardens. However our ultimate vision is neighborhoods and subdivisions built for families who wish to grow a vegetable garden with an optional greenhouse.
Our vision includes garden windows for growing herbs and placing garden harvests as well as southern facing sunrooms with plant ledges for maximum indoor growing space.
Imagine seeing a growing trend of neighborhoods built around gardening! If you love golf, that’s great. But for gardeners, the idea of an entire neighborhood built around gardening instead of golf… a garden community, is not just inspiring, it’s hopeful!
Imagine the possibilities. Neighbors sharing gardening knowledge, seeds and other resources. Block parties could include selling produce, seed swaps, food swaps, sharing propagations, cuttings and so many other possibilities.
We can keep expanding on this agrihood idea to include a community farmers market that serves the neighborhood and beyond.
If you haven’t seen it, do. We loved it enough to see it many times by now, for the enjoyment of it and in order to share the experience with friends.
The story is wonderful and heartwarming (no spoilers!) and what also proves quite charming is the village itself. This village town is replete with scenic countryside, stately architecture and a riverside bikeway. The town square, and the bustling farmer’s market display bounties of gorgeous (presumably) locally grown produce.
The film glowingly portrays the simple life of a small town, where residents need not load up their carts and coffers at a “modern” supermarket or warehouse discount store. Instead, they grab a basket and make their way — often on foot or bicycle — to the roadside produce market, to select the freshest produce for the day’s meals.
The village and countryside are such a lovely setting that it has likely sent more than one viewer to search out that little village, and perhaps, even to ponder what it would be like to live there.
Growing Food and Growing a Community Way of Life
Relative to real life, it’s wonderful that we’re beginning to see garden communities springing up around the concept of a food gardening lifestyle. Instead of neighborhoods built around golf courses, imagine the central focus of the neighborhood being food gardens, fruit trees, and sustainable permaculture yards and landscapes. That’s a beautiful image with so many wonderful side benefits.
We have nothing against golfing, but we’re not golfers. So as gardeners who love the freshest organic produce possible and healthy food we can grow, a garden neighborhood would have so much more appeal to us. And what a healthy, solution-oriented concept, to so many of today’s societal ills and challenges.
There’s an extraordinary story that speaks to this concept around the fascinating story of the Rosetans who founded and settled in Roseto, Pennsylvania in the late 1800’s.
The town of Roseto had the garden community lifestyle that contributed to exceptional health. None of the residents had any kind of heart trouble. Many people long for a return to simpler ways. Evening strolls and porch swing conversations… meals from the garden and neighbors sharing harvests.
AND… they all consume LOTS of rosemary! You can read more about Rosetans and more in this article on the Healthy Benefits of Rosemary.
Some of you may remember the TV series, Cheers… “A place where everyone knows your name.” That’s a vision we have of the ideal garden community.
Many people long to return to simpler ways and neighborhoods where everyone knows your name.
The Springing up of Garden Communities
Lo and behold, a phenomena along these lines is beginning to take shape here in the US and Canada, where “agrihoods” are springing up all over. Land developers who are known for bulldozing farm fields are now touting properties built on or near working farms, where residents can lay out their own garden spreads or join in self-sufficient community food production.
It’s no wonder, really– given stats from 2013, the National Gardening Association found that gardening has grown over 17% from 2008 to 2013. And further research over the same time period reveals:
1 in 3 households are now growing food – the highest overall participation and spending levels seen in a decade.
Americans spent $3.5 billion on food gardening in 2013 – up from $2.5 billion in 2008 – a 40% increase in five years.
76% of all households with a food garden grew vegetables, a 19% increase since 2008.
From 2008 to 2013 the number of home gardens increased by 4 million to 37 million households, while community gardens tripled from 1 million to 3 million, a 200% increase.
Approximately 75% of American household engage in some form of gardening and yard activities. There were 6 million new gardening households between 2014 and 2015. Millennials are leading the growth in the gardening arena. One million of those were millennial households between the ages of 18 and 34.[3]https://gardenresearch.com/
Given the rising tide of interest in “garden to table”, locavore, organic, urban gardens, suburban homesteads, healthy/fresh food production, and the like, it’s no surprise that more and more garden communities or “agrihoods” are being built around working farms and garden spaces rather than golf courses.
Baby Boomers Head to the Garden Communities
Retiring “Baby Boomers” and young parents alike are finding that intimacy with the land and its bounty may not be as far away as Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val. It might just be in their own backyards.
One of the beautiful things about communities built around gardening is how it doesn’t have to be age specific. It can be, but gardening is something that can involve all generations and provides a common purpose that bonds all ages and backgrounds, and it’s beautiful to see.
Agrihoods and Community Gardens
TEXAS – Harvest by Hillwood in Texas
Harvest by Hillwood agrihood is a LOT bigger and more elaborate than our dream, but includes many of the components, such as built to encourage community, gardening, farming and a healthy lifestyle, including neighborhood friendships and events.
LOCATION – Argyle and Northlake, Texas – Close to Dallas, Denton and Fort Worth
SIZE –
1,200 acres
3,900 single-family homes new and modern with amenities
FEATURES –
Coffee shop – in the remodeled 2-story farmhouse
Gathering Places – indoors and out
Event hall
Event lawn
Hangouts
Recreational areas
Lake with fishing
Parks
Playgrounds
Walking:
Sidewalks
Streets
Trails – over 16 miles
Pools, resort style
FOCUS:
Agri-living founded on nostalgia and environmentalism
Community farm living
Built around a commercial working farm
ORIGIN:
1877 family farm for 5+ generations
Built by Ross Perot Jr. and company
Here’s a video trailer of Harvest by Hillwood. Hillwood communities are created by the Ross Perot family of businesses.
MICHIGAN – Detroit Agrihood is Transforming its Community
Check out this INSPIRING farm built on just three acres of urban land reclaimed from abandoned buildings and neighborhoods.
The founder and project visionary, Quan Blunt, is currently the only paid employee, and began as a volunteer. This is an inspiring example of what’s possible with the efforts of just one man, whose incredible vision has inspired the support of many toward this successful agricultural effort within an abandoned and hopeless community.
LOCATION: Detroit, Michigan
SIZE:
3 acres – 1 acre farmed for growing produce
300 different varieties of produce
Cistern for collecting rainwater and snowmelt set up to irrigate the garden via direct flow from cistern
FOCUS:
Charity as a hedge to urban food deserts –
Has donated over 100,000 pounds of fresh produce between 2011-2018 to over 2,000 households is a 20 mile square radius
FEATURES
Community Center
Educational programs
Interns (unpaid) – from around the world:
Over 10,000 volunteers serving over 100,000 hours of service between 2011-2018
Children’s sensory garden
Building shipping container homes
FUNDING –
Donations
Fundraising
Grants
Sponsors
While the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (MIUFI) is not a garden community selling lots and homes, it is an example of an agrihood that is bringing a community together through growing food and gardens.
Articles on Agrihoods and Garden Communities Trends
If you’re as interested as we are in this growing “agrihood” and garden community trend, you will also enjoy these articles.
Common areas for gathering, walking, biking and socializing
Country store/stand for buying/selling member garden goods and other supplies, arts and crafts
Farming – naturally some residents may wish to become farmers, even beyond market gardening, so that’s on the vision board too! 👩🏻🌾👨🏻🌾
THE WHY: Community!
We can (and are, actually) building our dream of a self-sufficient country homestead.
However, we love the idea of a community of people interested in being connected like neighbors of old…. a place where “everybody knows your name”, kind of thing, where people want to connect and contribute with and to each other, barter, trade and help, (while still minding their own business). 😉💜😇
We do not currently have the funds to buy the land and build this outright as spec homes to sell. However…
BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME…
Based on what we’re seeing in the real estate trends given these past few years especially, there’s definitely increased migration from cities to rural areas with more people than ever interested in gardening, self sufficiency and getting back to nature and simpler ways.
So we’re confident that this is definitely a “build it and they will come” idea. Subsequently, we’re starting to put it out there in case there’s interest amongst investors to sponsor or partner in this idea.
We’ve built subdivisions and homes before, and though Coleman is a retired contractor, his license is current for overseeing the contracting of the project.
Okay folks! There’s so much more to the vision but that’s a snapshot of our dream. We’d love to hear yours and/or your thoughts on this!
Take care and let’s keep on growing!
Coleman and LeAura Alderson Growers@GardensAll.com
G. Coleman Alderson is an entrepreneur, land manager, investor, gardener, and author of the novel, Mountain Whispers: Days Without Sun. Coleman holds an MS from Penn State where his thesis centered on horticulture, park planning, design, and maintenance. He’s a member of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society and a licensed building contractor for 27 years. “But nothing surpasses my 40 years of lessons from the field and garden. And in the garden, as in life, it’s always interesting because those lessons never end!” Coleman Alderson
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