These resources are comprehensive guides to creating and maintaining the most common types of community gardens; they include links to many other resources and tools. You may find everything you need in this section, but resources for specific steps or actions involved in creating a community garden can be found in subsequent sections, such as Planning and Organizing, etc.
Title: How to Organize a Community Garden
Sponsoring Organization: North Carolina Cooperative Extension
Description: " A community garden can help transform people who happen to live in the same place into a united community. It celebrates diversity in individual plots while creating opportunities for people to work together and learn from each other—about gardening, food preparation, and more. This publication ... gives a basic overview of important steps to take in developing a community garden." This web page that is an excellent introduction to starting a community garden, including how to identify sponsoring organizations, lists of potential problems and how to prevent or manage them, and an appendix of sample documents such as plot map, bylaws, gardener memorandum of understanding, budget, and other resources. Page includes link to downloadable 16-page PDF with the same information.
Title: Vermont Community Garden Network -- Garden Organizer Toolkit
Sponsoring Organization: Vermont Community Garden Network
Description: This massive community garden resource hub has compiled a wealth of information (best practices, tools, etc.) on almost any aspect of community gardens you can think of. The Vermont Community Garden Network’s mission is "to cultivate well-being by helping people of all ages access resources to grow food, build confidence and connect with each other." The "Garden Organizer Toolkit," particularly aimed at garden leaders, is just the beginning. A great place to begin is with the overall guide, "Start a Garden" Other topics range from "Organizing in the Garden" and "Grow Support" (how to grow support for your garden through asset mapping, fundraising, and outreach), to "Growing in the Garden," "Learning in the Garden" (for both children and adults), and much more. See https://vcgn.org/garden-organizer-toolkit/coordinating-tools/garden-organizer-handbooks/ for a full page of selected books for garden organizers. The website has so much material that it can be a little challenging to navigate but well worth the effort, and its Search tool is particularly useful for that reason.
Title: Start--or Join--a Community Garden!
Sponsoring Organizations: AARP, Create the Good, and American Community Gardening Association
Description: Excellent community garden toolkit of information on the webpage, also downloadable as a PDF in English and in Spanish; links to additional resources.
Title: Community Garden Best Practices Toolkit
Sponsoring Organization: Food Security Network of Newfoundland and Labrador
Description: Excellent and comprehensive 58 page toolkit for community gardens, based on best practices "identified through a review of reports, resources and guides on community gardens across North America." Even though the guide was written for community organizations in Newfoundland and Labrador, and some of the resources mentioned are local to that area, most of the information is very relevant to those who want to start a community garden in Westchester County.
Title: Twin Cities Community Garden Start-Up Guide
Sponsoring Organization: Minnesota Community Gardening (formerly Gardening Matters)
Description: Excellent 28-page guide (viewable as a Google doc or downloadable as a PDF) to co-creating a sustainable community garden, covering the steps involved and including useful attachments such as a garden site evaluation, sample letter to the landholder, donation request letter, lease agreements, gardener agreements, and much more.
Title: Community Gardens
Sponsoring Organization: Soil Science Society of America
Description: Useful overview article about how to start, organize, site and build a community garden, including best practices in often-overlooked topics such as shared leadership, transparent decision making and conflict resolution.
Title: USDA - Community Gardening
Sponsoring Organization: United States Department of Agriculture
Description: Part of the USDA's Alternative Farming Information Center, this is a portal of links to many guides, articles and toolkits from a variety of organizations, including CDC SoilSHOP, legal resources, food safety for school gardens, American Community Gardening Association, Master Gardeners of American Horticultural Society, etc.
Title: American Community Garden Association (AGCA) Resources
Sponsoring Organization: American Community Garden Association
Description: The AGCA is "a grassroots non-profit advocacy organization focused on community gardening." Their mission is "to build community by increasing and enhancing community gardening and greening across the United States and Canada." Their website's Resources section (a bit hard to navigate, but with worthwhile information) offers links to downloadable files on many topics related to community gardening (unfortunately, all of the resources must be downloaded and are not viewable on the web pages themselves). In addition, AGCA sponsors training events (both virtual and in-person) for community gardeners on topics such as organizing and sustaining healthy community garden organizations: see their Events page.