Community gardens are awesome! And I don’t want to discourage anybody from getting a plot in a community garden!!!!! We need you 😃. I’ve been in half a dozen community gardens over the years and in every single one there are a few members who are a challenge. And I want to get a key word in here for search engines: They are a problem for community gardens. Typical human beings — where; in one particular case, she threw her waste tree trimmings into someone else’s plot instead of walking an unimaginable 30 ft to the compost pile. The tree trimmings were a few small branches, the point is that she seems to consider other people’s property as hers. She steals tarps, she takes over sheds, and she uses other people’s plot as if she, not they, had paid the fee.
It’s the attitude here. Oh, I should/can take it, it is just _one_ tomato. Oh, I can walk through their plot as a shortcut because I’ll be careful. Oh, it’s just one ear of corn. Oh, it’s not even a full-sized tomato it’s just a cherry tomato …. Or a strawberry, or far worse literally killing someone’s garden by shutting off their water because of a perceived drip, instead of contacting the leadership so that appropriate people can be notified. And we’ve all experienced that attitude of I’m going to follow you and talk at you until I get my way. 😃 Or better yet “please don’t do that”…. What did _I_ do?
It doesn’t matter at all how small the thing in question is because it’s the attitude and because the garden is “owned” by these people — I call them dime store gods. Because about all they have behind them is worth about a dime, but they sure want to play God. Real estate communities have police to protect the community members from people that feel that they can take whatever they want and play God in anyway they feel like. And little dime store gods lie, cheat, and steal because “the other person” _deserves_ it. Even killing! Most killings aren’t random but by somebody who believes that they are God and have the _right_ to terminate someone else’s life. The people who steal catalytic converters truly and honestly _believe_ that society owes them — and they are going to play God and take it.
Any organization running a community garden has a very deep obligation to protect the gardeners from the garden “criminals”. It is much more work to do this than sticking a sign out on the street, setting up a web page, and collecting money for the plots. It is far less enjoyable than paying a water bill and believing that that -in itself- is all that’s required to support the community. It is a huge amount of work to oversee all the humanity even for a small community garden. It is _hard_ to terminate the petty criminals. But it is the organization’s responsibility to be a mama bear. A mama bear who protects her gardeners from dime store revenge wanabe tiny gods. A mama bear does not say “oh that wolf isn’t that big, it won’t really hurt my cub.” A mama bear goes to bat right then and there for her cub — no matter how big the problem… period.
For all the community garden boards I salute your hard work and encourage you to be mama bears for your gardeners.
I think community gardens are a huge part of the future and fortunately only a very few are struggling to adequately police their members.
The best to you ALL. And I _never_ use all caps because it’s screaming. 😃