A vacant lot on a residential street is a common sight that goes unnoticed, except when the vacant lot is repurposed and transformed into a community garden. Research shows that community gardens offer a host of benefits for neighborhoods, including improvement of the physical and mental health of patrons, creation of community partnerships and educational opportunities, provision of fresh, locally grown food, and strikingly, reduction in neighborhood crime.

On Kentfield Road in Chico, an area that used to be an empty lot is now a destination: Kentfield Gardens. On any typical day, this sunny space that would otherwise be the exclusive domain of weeds and wildlife is full of garden beds, flowers and vegetable plants, neighbors and children. Kentfield Gardens is a community garden project founded by From The Ground Up Farms, a 501c3 nonprofit established in 2013. The garden is a public space where anyone can come, gather with friends, work in the garden or pick and eat fresh food, all for free.

Use of the formerly vacant lot that is now Kentfield Gardens is the gift of a neighborhood resident who owns the lot and lives across the street. This generous individual even pays for the water used for the garden. Funding for improvements to the property (like the covered seating area and outdoor kitchen) as well as ongoing maintenance comes from donations and grants.

Wendy LeMaster, who has a BA in microbiology from CSU Chico, oversees the youth programs at Kentfield Gardens and has volunteered there since its inception. In the beginning her hope was “to provide kids with an opportunity to learn gardening skills while enjoying each other's company in an outdoor environment, which allowed them to socialize after a long period of time when they weren't able to, due to the pandemic.” Since then, she says, the program called Kentfield Kids has expanded and become “a community for parents, friends, family and little ones to come together and enjoy nutritious foods, share recipes, gardening techniques, giggles and more.”

Thanks to a recent partnership between From The Ground Up Farms and the Butte County Local Food Network (BCLFN) which is also a 501c3 nonprofit, LeMaster has been hired as Garden Program Director to bring a new program called GROWN (Growing Resilient Optimism with Nature) to Kentfield Gardens and local schools. The GROWN program focuses on food literacy for kids (i.e. growing, harvesting, cooking, and processing food) and offers potential career path internships to older youths as well.

LeMaster says that GROWN encompasses much of what she had already been doing at Kentfield, with a few changes:  “I've modified my program to reflect a hybrid of the Teen Group and our Young Bud group, providing an hour of mentorship opportunity for our teens to work with our younger gardeners. Each group still has an hour of fun activity focused on their age group, and as always, this program remains free and families are still welcome to join us. The only other thing that's changed is now I get to bring these garden programs to schools throughout the county…. GROWN is a Butte County Local Food Network Project, which has been made possible by a generous grant awarded to BCLFN through the county, and I'm excited to see what we can accomplish.”

The Butte County Local Food Network lists eight community gardens on its website. Among them is Vecino Garden in Chico, located at 1535 Laburnum Avenue in the backyard of a private residence. This 1/3 acre property contains garden beds, fruit trees, a greenhouse, a neighborhood composting center, and a shaded seating area.

As of January 1, 2022, California has a new, statewide mandatory organic waste collection law aimed at reducing methane emissions by diverting organic waste from landfills (SB 1383). The county of Butte has a year and a half to develop a plan to implement the law, but Vecino Garden is already teaching and promoting neighborhood composting, funded by a grant from CalRecycle implemented through California Alliance for Community Composting.

Another community garden listed on the Butte County Local Food Network website is Oak Way Garden, located adjacent to Oak Way Park at the corner of 8^th Avenue and Nord (Highway 32) in Chico. This spacious garden is filled with vegetable plants, especially Asian varieties, and interspersed with fruit trees and bright flowers. Established by the Butte Environmental Council about 10 years ago, this garden flourishes on land owned by the City of Chico.

According to Caitlin Dalby, Executive Director of the Butte Environmental Council, neighborhood gardeners rent plots in Oak Way Garden for 50 cents per square foot, paid to the City to cover the cost of water. The yearly cost of a plot 25 by 25 feet is about $312 per year; a plot 15 by 15 feet is about $112/year, and the garden always has a waiting list.

Dalby says the garden was created to enable people to grow fresh food and to promote urban gardening as part of a healthy lifestyle. In addition, Oak Way Garden offers a composting program through Drop in the Bucket Bicycle Powered Compost Service. The service picks up compostable food scraps from nearby neighborhoods and brings the materials to Oak Way Garden via bicycle for composting at the garden.

How many more unused plots of land in Butte County could be transformed into productive gardens? The Butte Environmental Council hopes to locate properties in other neighborhoods for additional community gardens. And, Dalby says, the Council is also involved in a wide range of projects including tree planting, recycling, composting, K-12 educational outreach and coalition building.

Consensus about the value of community gardens continues to grow. A 2020 big-picture review of 45 studies conducted by researchers at Cornell University concluded that “properly designed and maintained outdoor green space (including community gardens) has the potential to reduce violent crime and gun violence, to make communities safer and keep residents healthier” (Green space can reduce violent crime - Neuroscience News).

The Butte County Local Food Network lists many additional benefits of community gardens on their website. Director Pamm Larry points to the Butte County Local Food Assessment on the BCLFN website as a guiding document in their efforts to boost food security in Butte County, care for the environment, and promote social justice and community building. Through a variety of ongoing projects, the Butte County Local Food Network is working to ensure local food sovereignty and abundance for the present and the future.

For more information, see the following resources:

Project for Public Spaces:  Beyond Food: Community Gardens as Places of Connection and Empowerment (pps.org)

Butte County Local Food Network: Butte County Local Food Network (bclocalfood.org)

Butte Environmental Council: Butte Environmental Council (becnet.org)

GROWN: Growing Resilient Optimism With Nature – Butte County Local Food Network (bclocalfood.org)

UC Master Gardeners of Butte County are part of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system. To learn more about us and our upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, email the Hotline at mgbutte@ucanr.edu or leave a phone message on our Hotline at (530) 538-7201. To speak to a Master Gardener about a gardening issue, or to drop by the MG office during Hotline hours, see the most current information on our Ask Us Hotline webpage.