Collective Gardening Opportunities in Vermont

There are collective community gardens sprouting up all over the place. Check out these gardens and consider adding yours to our listing. Be sure to check out our GrowTeam gardens.  

Collective community gardening empowers individuals to reclaim their food sovereignty by providing access to land, tools, mentorship, and collaborators to share the garden work. Gardening together is fun and builds community. Sharing resources like land, and tools  saves money and reduces barriers. Food grown by friends and neighbors is the most delicious.

Collective Gardening Resources

The People’s Farm | Burlington VT

The People’s Farm is a 1.5-acre community powered farm in Burlington’s Intervale. We grow vegetables to donate to our local charitable food system. We are seeking volunteers all the time! All experience levels welcome.

More info here.

Sign up: email [email protected]

The Homeward Bound Collective | Burlington, VT

The Homeward Bound Collective is a group of friends that grows food and flowers at the Rock Point South community garden space. Over the last six years we have improved the soil there and made much progress toward pushing out perennial weeds like thistles. In 2020, we gave over 100 pounds of vegetables and herbs to Food Not Bombs Burlington, and while we wouldn’t feel great about expressing these gifts’ values in dollars, its worth noting that much of it was high value, lightweight crops such as basil, kale, dill, cilantro, scallions and celery. We also build a beautiful deer fence from timber harvested sustainably from Rock Point’s forests. This year, we will likely contribute more; we have expanded our beds and gotten seeds and starts in the ground early!

Interesting in learning more: contact Sam Bliss, [email protected]

Northstar Collective | Marshfield VT

The Northstar Collective project is a Youth-led but multi-generational food sovereignty project. We’re growing herbs and plants for BIPOC groups around the state as well as for ourselves, our volunteers, and our community. We’re up and running already for the growing season, and we want to work with YOU.

We are actively seeking mentors and volunteer support for our North Star Collective, which will occasionally include an amazing crew of 6 enthusiastic kids of color between 6-14 who are just joining our family! We also have ongoing forestry and construction projects, and more regenerative agricultural projects (including a new flock of sheep) and workshops throughout the summer. We’d also love to hear your ideas for farm projects you’d like to get off the ground here at the center, and are welcoming proposals

For more information click here.

The Garden at 485 Elm | Montpelier VT

At the Garden at 485 Elm in Montpelier, friends and neighbors share gardening space on what used to be a lawn. This reduces our carbon footprint and helps protect the natural riverside habitat along the property. Together, we grow food and flowers, operate a small-scale composting system, learn from each other, and enjoy each other’s company. We each contribute to the garden’s expenses, which are much more affordable when pooling modest funds. We share crops with neighbors who might not have access to fresh, local food, and with local programs doing the same. We welcome inquiries from anyone curious about collective gardening and from community members interested in growing with us for the season. We appreciate donations of needful garden tools and supplies and assistance with projects. Email [email protected] and learn more at www.thegardenat485elm.org.

The Everything Space Garden Project | E. Montpelier VT

The Garden Project, created by the Everything Space, is located on the land of Western Abenaki peoples at the confluence of the Winooski and her North Branch, currently known as East Montpelier, VT. We are a group of mostly Queer and AFAB folks, many of whom identify as cis or cis-passing, some who identify across the Trans spectrums.

Collectively we tend a biodiverse half-acre garden where we strive to be in embodied practices of connection, learning, healing, and repair with one another, the land, and the non-human peoples we are in ever-evolving relationship with. We are in active practice with ourselves and with each other around unsettling, anti-racist, and decolonial work. We center our values and work in food and social justice, decolonizations and embodied reckoning with settler-colonial privilige, ancestral reconnection and right relationships with all of life.

More info here.

Upper Valley Apple Corps | Upper Valley VT & NH

Upper Valley Apple Corps plants and cares for free-for-the-picking fruit and nut trees, and edible landscapes in public spaces throughout the community. 

Together we are:

  • Building Skills necessary to plant, care for, and celebrate the trees that feed us;
  • Building Community through transforming the local landscape to enhance connections between land and people;
  • And, Raising Awareness of the need for greater food security and of the beauty and value of an edible landscape.

Upper Valley Apple Corps operates under the fiscal sponsorship of ONRCD http://onrcd.org/

Contact us at [email protected], or find us on Facebook.

Cooperative Gardens Commission

Founded in march 2020, the cooperative gardens commission (CGC) is a grassroots collective working toward food sovereignty in response to the covid19 pandemic and persistent injustice.

The Cooperative Gardens Commission is composed of hundreds of volunteers from across North America working as a collective to facilitate the conscientious sharing of resources — including seeds, soil, equipment, labor, land, and knowledge — and build solidarity across traditional divides. We are farmers, gardeners, activists, and organizers. We believe increasing local food production can help build community power and resilience.

Resource sharing map: https://www.coopgardens.org/

Get involved: https://www.coopgardens.org/connect

Would you like your collective garden project to be listed here? We can help 

  • Recruit gardeners
  • Promote  your project
  • Include you in our community of practice

 Let’s share ideas!  Send us an email at [email protected]

Subscribe to our Email List!

Stay in touch with ShiftMeals by following us!
Use #ShiftMeals to help us spread the word.

Powered by