Sharecroppering unused Gardens. Could it be done in Ireland?

Belfast

Here is an article on it being done in the UK.

I believe it is also popular in America.

Meet the urban sharecroppers
Want to grow your own organic fruit and veg but don't have the time? Why not find a neighbour who longs to garden but doesn't have the space? Tanis Taylor reports on the rise of garden-sharing scheme
* Tanis Taylor
* The Guardian, Thursday 4 September 2008


It was a small notice, in between the ads for childminding and English lessons. "Free gardening. I will cultivate an abundant vegetable plot for you in your garden and we will share the produce 50/50." Then a number.

When I got home I looked at my garden - unused, unloved, under wood chip. I looked at Google Earth. Almost half of the 3.1m households in London have a garden. Put together, they would occupy an area roughly the size of the Isle of Wight, and could insulate us against food price hikes and keep us all in fresh vegetables. Most are lawns or crazy paving.

The idea of garden-sharing began in cities, among people who wanted to grow fruit and vegetables to eat but didn't have the time, space or confidence. The most obvious solution was to pool resources; for knowledgeable people with time on their hands, but little space, to help the time-poor; and for those - often elderly - with large, unmanageable gardens to get labour in exchange for yield.

It started informally with flat dwellers annexing the odd flower bed and gradually it grew. Communal gardens cropped up, gardening groups emerged. Fritz Haeg created an edible estate in the front gardens of a Southwark tower block. Projects such as the Tavistock Garden Share Alliance and pilot schemes such as LandFit and Swapaplot paired up unused gardens with the green-fingered. Suddenly there was a blush of Yahoo message groups, adverts in the local library, communal street sheds and action days. People began to share support and tips at first, then labour, compost, watering duties and harvests. Sales of vegetable seeds overtook those of flowers for the first time since the second world war.

The GroFun (Growing Real Organic Food in Urban Neighbourhoods) project in Bristol encourages members............

The rest of the Article can be found on the guardians web site

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/04/ethicalliving.organics

Belfast

What is Landshare?

1. A place linking people who want to grow their own fruit & veg to space where they can grow it
2. A network of help and expertise
http://landshare.channel4.com/

What is LandFit?
'LandFit' is an initiative for bringing would-be gardeners together with gardens. You could call it garden sharing. Or open allotments. Basically we want to make the most of the green space in the city for the benefit of those who want to get their hands dirty doing some gardening.

The concept can work anywhere that a gardener and someone responsible for a garden (the 'lead stakeholder') agree to letting the gardener work in the garden. An example is the front garden three doors away from me, where my potatoes are just now coming up. As an organisation, 'LandFit' is about trying to help such agreements happen, and in ways which encourage food growing. What Landfit is not, is a free gardening service. In order for the concept to work, the gardener needs to have relative freedom in cultivation, again much the same as an allotment.

Given the immediate and wide applicability of the concept, this could be a huge task. At the moment we are thinking about (1) governance issues for us as an organisation, (2) developing a web site to hold information about gardeners and gardens, (3) developing a model agreement between gardener and 'lead stakeholder', and (4) ways in which LandFit style agreements can be supported.
http://www.landfit.org/


http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/land-sharing-is-trend.php



Vancouver, Canada are also doing it.
Sharing Backyards
http://www.sharingbackyards.com/

Adopt-A-Garden scheme – Island leads the way with green idea
http://www.footprint-trust.co.uk/adoptgarden.html

The BBc have a story on the subject
Adopting gardens on the Isle of Wight
Stephen Stafford
Young budding gardeners without a garden could soon have their own plot thanks to a new environmental scheme on the Isle of Wight.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/hampshire/content/articles/2008/03/10/iow_garden_adopt_feature.shtml