The Home Gardening Project Foundation
how to give raised-bed vegetable gardens to people in need
Gallery of Gardens 1 2 3
Photos of gardens & gardeners
Building raised-bed gardens
See how we built 1400 gardens
Diagram and materials list
About us: our history and mission, and how to help give gardens to people
Urban gardening and the benefits of gardening: Links to other sites
"How to garden" links: books and sites about raised beds, composting, what and how to plant
Why give away gardens? Here's one answer...
Food stamp use up by more than1 million in 1 year
Food stamp participation rose in July 2005 to 25,564,100, for an over-the-year increase of nearly 1.16 million people.
Participation has risen in 48 of the last 55 months.
Nonetheless, research suggests that nearly half of all eligible people are not receiving food stamp benefits. [source, Food Research and Action Center report]
Support the Home Gardening Project Foundation in starting new garden-building projects
across America
How-to booklet and articles
Below are links to articles about the Home Gardening Project and a booklet (for downloading, in PDF form,) on how to start and run an HGP yourself.
How to Give away Gardens 
is a 55-page booklet by Dan Barker, founder of The Home Gardening Project, describing how to establish a non-profit organization, seek funding, define the work, and build free vegetable gardens for people in need.(3MB PDF; download the free Adobe Reader if you do not have it already)
Articles
The Gift of a Garden, by David Schwartz, from the September 1997 Smithsonian Magazine. (Great photographs by Roger Foley) Get Adobe Reader (free)
Payday (on another page in our site) by Dan Barker, from the Sun Magazine, describes a tour of recipients gardens in which representatives of funding organizations meet gardeners and see the results of the work of the HGP.
Giving Away Gardens (on another page in our site) by Dan Barker, also from the Sun Magazine. An essay on just what it's like to do the work--and why it needs to be done across our country and others.
Out in the suburban slums, where the ground has been in turf for a hundred years, or the housing was built on the gravel of an ancient flood plain, it is not enough just to go in and pass out seeds. To be effective it is necessary to bring in the whole garden. Most of the impoverished, elderly, and disabled, in need of additional sustenance, are no longer able to till that depleted soil. They can plant, weed, water, and harvest, though, if they've got a garden to work in. In this city alone there are thousands who need and would use the proceeds from a garden. Any one of us could become any one of them...
I invented this work by consolidating my experience working in nurseries, construction, writing poetry, while trying to recover from a divorce and being robbed at gunpoint in a wino grocery store, knocked unconscious by a blow from a .38 butt, the muzzle pressed against my occipital bone for ten minutes, the hammer cocked; the gunman’s accomplices couldn’t figure how to open the computer cash register...
[After we finish building her garden] I teach Ms. Wittingham block and succession planting, seed conservation, composting, watering, and fertilizing, and tell her I’ll be by again in early May, when the weather warms up, to deliver starts for tomatoes (four varieties), eggplant, peppers, basil, and flowers. What’s a garden without flowers? She says thank you, she’s shy about the new gardening techniques; she’s never availed herself of a social service before but now she’s older and the money is gone. Careful for her dignity, I accept her thanks for making it so easy, one phone call..[If you'd like to read more works from the Sun--essays, interviews, short stories--by many writers, look for the anthology Stubborn light: A collection of writings from the second decade of the Sun (The best of the Sun). The essay "Giving Away Gardens" was included in the anthology.]
Gallery of Gardens 1 2 3 Our mission and how to help Photos of garden building How gardens help people
Vegetable gardening resources (links) E-mail us
© 2005 The Home Gardening Project Foundation. Last updated October 2005.
