Missoula's Community Gardens

Northside Gardeners grow a wide variety of crops.

Community Garden Opening Day is Saturday April 11th. Vetran gardeners should show up at 10am to reserve their plots, and new gardeners should come at 12pm. Gardens are awarded on a first come, first serve basis.

Neighborhood-based community gardens provide many benefits to Missoula residents, including: household garden plots; access to tools and advice; and beautiful places where families and neighbors gather to enjoy growing healthy, delicious food.
Community Gardens are supported in part by United Way, and many individual donors. Cost is $25 for the season plus a $15 clean-up deposit.

> Specific Garden Information

Community gardens are a well-established way of helping low-income people meet their own needs for healthy food. Families without yard space of their own can rent a small plot to grow their own vegetables.

Community gardens are working vibrant green spaces shared by neighborhood residents and the public. We locate them in low-income neighborhoods, which tend to be very urbanized, and they specifically serve people without access to their own (open space) land.

Community gardens are an oasis of beauty and peace.

Community gardens and greening projects work to affect change at the heart of where change is needed most: in low-income neighborhoods. They are developed by the people who live there, promoting a shift to the gardeners as “owners” and leaders of projects.

Research and our experience clearly show that community gardeners make more use of gardens in their immediate neighborhoods. So, while we have opportunities to increase plots at existing gardens, our preference is to add new locations in low-income neighborhoods.

Specific Garden Information:

ASUM Community Garden Organizer: Alex Kuennen

Location: Behind student housing on Higgins Avenue, one block before Pattee Canyon Road. Turn into student housing and go behind the apartments to the dirt road leading to the greenhouses.
Students have preference in garden plots. There are food aid plots for the Volunteers for Veggies Program.

Meadow Hill/Flagship School and Community Garden Organizer: Betsy Defries, 207.1117
Location: 4210 S. Reserve St, at the end of 24th Street.
This garden has 15 plots for lease and uses a small number of volunteers, in collaboration with the Flagship program at Meadowhill School.

Orchard Gardens Community Gardens and Neighborhood Farm Manager: Sarah Bortis, 728.8835
Location: This garden is located at homeWORD's affordable housing site, just west of Reserve on 210 N. Grove Street.
This is a unique partnership melding affordable housing and food security issues. This site host community garden plots and a CSA mini-farm.

Northside Community Garden Organizer:Betsy Defries, 207.1117
Location: Cooley and Holmes / Bus- Route 3
Plots are very popular with the Northside residents and usually go fast.

Greg Price, River Road Organizer

River Road Community Garden and Neighborhood Farm Manager : Greg Price, 240-3848
Location: 1697 River Road / Bus- Route 9
Very large area with lots of garden plots for lease, food aid plots, and home to Grubshed, a CSA program.
Needs: 4-6 volunteers for every shift plus one big workday a month with 10+ volunteers

2nd Street Garden
Garden Organizer:Betsy Defries
Location: 1270 2nd St. West
This garden is in partnership with the neighborhood where this garden is located.

Basic ingredients of a community garden:

• On-site tools so gardeners can walk to the site without having to carry tools. Also, gardeners don’t have to own their own tools.
• Water provided for irrigation.
• Community spaces. Herb and flower gardens, children’s gardens and other shared areas are common elements.
• Amenities such as a picnic table, a shady spot or a play area add greatly to the garden space. We make sure all our sites are kid-friendly and good family places.
• Rules or Guidelines: All of the gardens have them. They address issues such as abandoned plots, weeds, parking or watering restrictions when applicable.
• We are kid friendly!