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
Articles about HGP
Smithsonian:
"The Gift of a Garden" 
Sun: "Giving Away Gardens"
Sun: "Payday"
How to Give Away Gardens
download free how-to booklet for starting a Home Gardening Project (PDF)
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]
Advantages of raised-beds
• Better soil & better drainage
Growing plants in raised beds is a logical choice for gardeners with soil that is thin, rocky, exhausted, or heavy and poorly drained. Raised beds permit plant roots to develop in soil held above water-logged or compacted zones. This provides a more optimum soil environment for root growth.
• Higher yields
Better root growth from improved soils leads to higher yields for food crops. Also, intensive planting in raised beds means more plants can be grown in a smaller area than with conventional row-cropping techniques. No space is wasted between rows.
• Expanded growing season.
Better drainage speeds soil warming and allows earlier spring planting. In wet seasons, soil dries out faster, permitting planting to proceed between rains. Soil stays warm longer in the fall, too. .
• Easier maintenance
Because plants are growing above the level of walkways, less stooping is required for weeding, watering and other chores. Intensively planted raised beds provide dense foliage cover, shading out much weed growth.
• Using difficult sites
Raised beds make gardening possible on sites where growing plants would otherwise be impossible.
• Grow invasive plants such as mint and horseradish in a defined area.
• Avoid tilling--don't walk on the growing area of your garden. Soil in raised beds isn't compacted by your feet, so it stays light; scratch it up with any hand tool, or even your fingers, to plant.
• Improve only the actual growing area. No need to add compost, manure, etc. to the entire garden site, just the raised bed growing areas.
• Sit down while gardening. Even 10" high beds can be used as seats; higher-built beds (about 2.5ft) are an ideal height for tending while sitting down; add sturdy horizontal tops for more comfort if you like. Just remember to consider the width of the bed so the plants are within easy reach.
Above mostly from a Univ. of Missouri Extension publication
How to build a raised-bed vegetable garden
Below this series of photos, you'll find a construction diagram and materials list.
Garden on a truck: soil, lumber, tools, wheelbarrow: ready to go to the home of the garden recipient. The materials needed for one garden are: Lumber: 6- 8' 2" x 8" , 6- 5' 2" x 8", 3- 6' 2" x 2", 1- 8' 2" x 2"; three full yards of good soil; stakes, twine, nails, hand tools, bag of fertilizer, seeds and plants, wheelbarrow. (Detailed materials list below) Everything is provided so that the new gardener can begin immediately. If the last frost has not occurred yet, plants for tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and the like can be delivered to the gardeners later.
The soil is loaded onto the truck with a small front-end loader, like a Bobcat, though the first year it was shovelled up by hand. Note the tailgate area of the truck: a hydraulic dump-bed has been installed (Jere-Dan EZLift) with custom-welded "wings" to funnel the soil out through a wheelbarrow-wide gate, closed between uses with a wooden panel. With these two mechanical helpers--the Bobcat and the dump=bed--a team of two, working hard, averaged 4 gardens per day.
The building season's length depends on climate; in Portland, we began March 25th when rains usually slackened so that soil was not so wet and heavy, and ended in late May or early June to allow time for everyone to have a good growing season before fall.
Lumber for the soil-frames is laid out, in a sunny spot close to the kitchen door. Three-foot wide paths are left between the beds. The trellis frame has been put together, ready to be nailed on to the finished frames and then strung. [Do not use railroad ties treated with creosote, or any wood treated with toxic preservatives like arsenic.]
Frames are constructed and staked in place, square to the world. Each garden is a gift to the gardener, and should be made with care. Beds eight inches deep can be built right on top of grass and the grass will not grow up through the soil--no photosynthesis, no growth.
Filled, raked out, completed garden with strung trellis. Three 5' x 8' beds provide 120 square feet of growing area. For handicapped gardeners, beds taller than 8" can be built. Make beds no wider than 5 feet so that gardeners are able to reach to the center of the growing area from each side. Allow 3 foot pathways between beds, or between beds and structures such as fences.
Builder-director Dan Barker, teaching a new gardener why it is important not to walk on the soil. Because the soil is not walked on and compacted, raised beds can easily be cultivated with a hand tool and never need rototilling. The tomato cages and starts for tomatoes and other warm-weather crops, are supplied with each garden.
Single-parent mother and daughter "grazing" from their garden. Top
After a few years of garden-building, we stopped taking pictures, except for the brief report we made to funding agencies. The gardeners found being designated "charity cases" demeaning and the stories of their lives were consistently similar. In running a Home Gardening Project, respect for the dignity of the recipients is essential. As soon as the garden was built, it belonged to the gardener. And success rates and patterns were consistent: the gardens were designed to make success easy, requiring only that the participants plant and then water regularly. First and second-year participants received informative newsletters periodically, based on the events in our own garden, and including recipes. In the fall we delivered compost to that year's gardeners, and then in the spring they received seeds and starts for their second year. After that they were on their own. Over 80% continued gardening, a testament to the rewards they were receiving from their gardens.
Learn more about the HGPF on our articles page, with links to articles about the project from the Smithsonian and other magazines, and one by the founder about his experience. Are you interested in the details of starting and running a Home Gardening Project? On that same page, you'll find a free 55-page booklet which you can download, in PDF format. This is not a franchise; we're not selling anything. The idea is free and we would like to see it implemented around the world.
The Home Gardening Project Foundation exists to disseminate the idea, and to raise money to assist people starting projects. We turn money into gardens, making "real change in the real world," as Dan says. Contributions are tax-deductible for US residents. Contact us and help give gardens to elderly, poor, and handicapped people!
Diagram of garden construction
In the top part of the diagram, note the "strong-box" corner construction method: a board is nailed to the end of one neighbor and the side of the other neighbor. After the frame is made and placed, and any necessary levelling done to avoid gaps under the boards, then stakes are driven into the ground next to the inside of the boards and then nailed to them.
Materials and tools list
The materials needed for one garden are:
Lumber: 6- 8' 2" x 8" , 6- 5' 2" x 8", 3- 6' 2" x 2", 1- 8' 2" x 2";
[Do not use railroad ties treated with creosote, or any wood treated with toxic preservatives like arsenic.]
three full yards of good soil;
stakes, twine for trellises (we used binder twine, which comes in a 5-lb. cylinder, about 2500 ft. long; to avoid tangles, put it into a plastic bucket with a lid, and feed the end out through a hole in the lid), nails (16d and 8d), bag of fertilizer, seeds and plants.
Tools:
1 wheelbarrow (we recommend the kind with a plastic load tray because they are much lighter: if you are going to carry the wheelbarrow on top of the truckload of soil, as seen in the first photo on this page, you will appreciate that factor!)
3 shovels (1 round-point for digging and rough-levelling of site, and 2 square-points for shovelling soil out of the truck into the wheelbarrow)
1 metal rake
1 broom (for sweeping off the edges of the boxes and any soil spilled on sidewalks or driveways)
1 pocket level for trueing up the frames
Pickup truck (if you can get it, a hydraulic dump bed will tip the soil out into the wheelbarrow with a minimum of manual effort)
Front-end loader to load soil into the truck; otherwise it is a matter of "shovelling up" at the materials storage site, and then "shovelling out" at the garden site.
for each garden-builder: a framing hammer (22 oz. for men), leather carpenter's belt with pouches for nails (this is a big time-saver compared to carrying nails in pocket or hand, and avoids spillage of nails in peoples' yards), pocketknife, knee-pads (optional), gloves, raingear if needed.
Gallery of Gardens 1 Our mission and how to help Photos of garden building How gardens help people E-mail us
Read more about HGP: articles from Smithsonian | Sun Magazine
© 2005 The Home Gardening Project Foundation. Last updated October 2005.
Construction diagram and
materials list for building
raised beds.
Can only the rich afford to be thin? and eat healthy food?
Federal researchers are studying the relationship between lower incomes and higher percentages of being overweight, but some government statistics already show that link. People with low incomes are more likely to be overweight or obese (30 or more pounds overweight).
Adam Drewnowski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington-Seattle, who reviewed the latest research and published a review article on the subject in the January issue of American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, is not surprised.
"What's really cheap are foods made with refined flour, added sugar and corn syrup and added fat." People with limited income, he says, "buy foods that fill them up, and who's to blame them? They get the most calories for their money."
Indeed, calorie per calorie, chips are usually cheaper than fresh asparagus; bulk cookies are less expensive than raspberries. Sure, rice and beans are inexpensive, Drewnowski says. "But it's kind of patrician to say, 'The rich can eat a diet high in antioxidants with lots of vegetables and salmon, but for everyone else, rice and beans are good enough.' "
Beyond pricing, access also could be a problem for people who are not as well off. Numerous studies have found that grocery stores in lower-income areas offer far fewer healthful food options.
In some poor neighborhoods, people typically need to drive or take a bus for a half-hour or more to get to a major store; otherwise they need to rely on small grocery stores, convenience markets and "hybrid gas stations" where they choose from a smaller selection of food items at higher prices. The stores may have hot dogs, fried chicken, doughnuts, deli meats, frozen pizza, pork rinds, candy and some canned foods, but they don't have many — if any — fresh fruits and vegetables.
Most of the poor in America live in urban areas and have "crummy" grocery stores where they often pay more for poorer-quality food, an expert says. Still, cost may be the biggest hurdle for most people trying to win the battle of the bulge.
"There's a perception that people spend their food budget on processed foods such as cans of Spaghettios and boxes of macaroni and cheese because they are too lazy to eat healthy. But," says one woman interviewed, " I think people would eat a lot healthier if they could afford to purchase fresh foods." [Or, better yet, grow their own fresh vegetables at home!] USA Today article
Poverty in the US
How many people were poor in 2004?
In 2004, 12.7 percent of all Americans lived in poverty, according to the US Census Bureau. Between 1993 and 2000, the poverty rate fell each year, reaching 11.3 percent in 2000. Poverty has risen in each of the last four years. 35% of the poor in the US are children. Almost 1/5 of all children in the US live in poor households.
What's the definition of "poor"?
The income definitions are extremely low. For one person, 65 or older, the cutoff is $9060: thus an elderly person with $10,000 in income is not officially "poor." A single parent with two children must make less than $15,219 in order to meet poverty standards, and two adults with two children must make less than $19,157. Two adults with no children must make less than $12,649. (These income figures do not include noncash benefits a household may receive such as food stamps or Medicaid. The figures are from the US Census Bureau publication P60-229. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004. avail as pdf or here as HTML or see summary chart here.)
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