Do you live in the Sandy Springs or Roswell area and want to garden in a community of likeminded plant people? Join our North Fulton Community Garden! Just call the North Fulton Extension office at 404-613-7670 or email northfulton.extension@uga.edu to apply.
The North Fulton Community Garden is perfect for new and experienced gardeners alike. We’ve got 54 individual plots, each about 3’x 6′. This may seem like a small area, but trust me, this is plenty of space to grow vegetables and flowers all season long.
This year, our community grew warm-season crops, like tomatoes, peppers, squash, corn, and beans as well as cool-season crops, like collards, cauliflower, lettuce, and brussels sprouts. Many of our gardeners also grow flowers, like dahlias, cosmos, sweet alyssum, sunflowers, and strawflower. This year, one of our gardeners even grew luffa (a.k.a loofah)! Your plot is your playground–plant old favorites or try something new!
We’ve also got a sprawling pollinator garden with milkweed for our monarchs and native plants, like passionflower and yarrow, for our many other pollinating insects. If you can’t get enough of vegetable gardening in your own plot, help out in our donation plots, where we grow vegetables to donate to the Solidarity Sandy Springs food bank. We’ve got community fruit trees, including figs and blueberries, that our members are welcome to harvest from.
We place a heavy emphasis on the community component of community gardening. Think of it as though you’re joining a garden club with a complementary plot. We hold monthly workdays (alternating Saturdays and Sundays) where our gardeners get together to maintain our shared space. You’ll often catch us trimming back plants in the pollinator garden, laying cardboard to suppress weeds, planting cover crops, organizing the toolshed, and weeding. If you have mobility issues, no problem–we have ADA-compliant plots and can absolutely find a perfect job for you at the workdays.
To help build your gardening knowledge, we host optional classes and workshops after each workday, taught by Extension agents, master gardeners, garden members, and invited speakers. Class topics this year included:
- Prepping and Amending Your Soil
- Starting Seeds
- Protecting Your Plot with Exclusion Netting
- Plant Disease Management
- Insect Safari
- Composting Basics
- Cover Cropping in Raised Beds
- Extending the Season with Polytunnels
- Seed Saving 101
- Plant Propagation
Thanks to Food Well Alliance, we now have a greenhouse! Every spring and fall, our greenhouse manager grows complementary transplants for every garden member. These little plant starts take off in the garden and make growing spring and summer crops a breeze.
Plots are $50-65 per year, depending on size and location within the garden. Garden members are eligible to rent up to two plots per season.
We would love to have you! To join our vibrant gardening community, call the North Fulton Extension office at 404-613-7670 or email northfulton.extension@uga.edu to apply.
