City of High Springs Community Gardens Wins the ICMA Award for Community Sustainability

ICMA 2009 Community Sustainability Award Application

City of High Springs Farmers Market and Community Gardens

For more information, contact the Community Garden Coordinator at

Community Garden Application
Community Garden Contract

Organic, Sustainable, Living Green, the City of High Springs Florida strives to provide a healthy, sustainable community.Located in the heart of North Central Florida, surrounded by springs, rivers, lakes and forests, is the City of High Springs, population of 4, 786.The City is a travel destination for tourism, offering canoeing, camping, scuba diving, biking, antique shopping, and charming Bed and Breakfast inns.

Attracted by tourist’s dollars, local farmers began setting up roadside stands to sell their homegrown produce on vacant lots.These illegal roadside vendors were in violation of local City ordinances, which prohibited such sales.

The City of High Springs City Commissioners, the City Manager and Staff, interested town and civic leaders, local farmers and gardeners, High Springs Main Street, the Chamber of Commerce, local business owners and volunteers attended strategic planning and visioning meetings.Each contributed to resolve this issue by creating a partnership that would improve quality of life and provide more efficient and effective services to the community and its visitors.

This innovative, collaborative, effort resulted in the creation of the High Springs Farmers Market, a coalition of local, quality, fresh produce farmers and growers of organic fruits and vegetables.Developed as a Department of the City of High Springs, the City has recently chosen to contract the management of the Market with the High Springs Main Street Program, a nonprofit agency.

The Market began with six to ten vendors and today has sixty registered vendors.Market days are Thursdays from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm all year round.Conveniently located in James Paul Park, behind the High Springs City Hall, it provides ready access to other downtown businesses and restaurants.Market revenues are from booth rental fees of $15 a week or $45 per month. Vendors sell a variety of selections from candles, honey, arts and crafts, and baked goods to watermelons and zucchini when in season.Storytelling Time, read by the High Springs Library, is provided in the gazebo for the children.Artists draw visitors and provide a quaint atmosphere to the Market. Pet friendly, many bring their four footed friends to accompany them on their shopping trip.The Market Manager receives 75% of booth rental fees and the City receives 25% for advertising, supplies and overhead expenses and does not net the City a profit.Recently, the Market was a grant recipient from PPS, Project for Public Spaces and the Kellogg Foundation. This project improved the Park and offered free Market tokens to the needy.

The Market is unique in that it offers EBT or Electronic Benefit Transfer Access. The benefits include: Food Stamp recipients can use their benefits at the Market, Credit Card users can charge funds in exchange for Market Tokens redeemable with any vendor, WIC/FMNP (Women, Infants & Children/Farmers Market Nutrition Program) can use the benefit redemption capacity, and SFMNP (Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program) can access benefits.

In conjunction with the Farmers Market, the City of High Springs developed two Community Gardens Programs, the Downtown Community Garden and the Douglass Neighborhood Garden.Area youth, adults and seniors learn to grow and harvest their own delicious, organic, fresh produce to feed themselves all year long.

The Community Gardens program is administered by the City of High Springs in partnership with the High Springs Farmers Market and is designed to compliment and improve neighborhoods by reclaiming littered right-of-ways and vacant city lots with environmentally enhanced community social centers for all age groups.

Interested local residents for a small fee or no fee can cultivate plots and relationships with their neighbors to grow organic, nutritious vegetables and produce.No skill level is required to steward a sustainable garden and lifestyle.This usable land becomes attractive, complimentary and educational for the residents and visitors to the area.Seeds, recipes, and techniques are exchanged at social gatherings centered in the gardens.Community gardens and gardeners provide sustainability to the neighborhoods for nutritional resources.

These neighborhood green spaces are provided by local government for residents as educational centers to grow, share and eat fresh nutritional vegetables, herbs and produce for their families, friends and neighbors.The Community Gardens and gardeners improve neighborhood environments by encouraging networking with other residents, beautifying the area with fresh flowers and food, supporting area youth in healthy activities, building skills and providing learning opportunities in low income, high crime neighborhoods.The Gardens have created local pride and a sense of community.

The cost of renting a plot is $15 per growing season or $25 a year.Fall planting is March 15th and Spring planting is October 15^th.This fee covers the irrigation of the garden and top soil as well as the organic mushroom compost.Plots are free to persons on public assistance programs who would like to participate.First time and skilled gardeners are welcome.The Gardens are self-sustaining and volunteer-driven initiated with seed money from the City of High Springs for the start up of the program.

Each Community Garden contains (25) twenty-five 4x8 raised bed plots with top soil and organic mushroom compost.Each gardener has an opportunity to learn and grow high quality, high yield vegetables and practice organic growing techniques.Vertical, hydroponics, floating and square foot gardening techniques are taught and shared.

The Downtown Community Garden is located behind High Springs City Hall on NW 2^nd Avenue, adjacent to the High Springs Farmers Market.The Douglass Community Garden is a neighborhood garden located in a higher crime, low income neighborhood.

The Douglass Garden features a handicapped accessible table garden.This is an elevated 4x8 plot with a bottom raised to a height that enables a person in a wheel chair to tend this garden or a gardener to stand and work the plot.Both Gardens offer composting, common plots for sweet corn and collard greens, watermelon patches, blueberry hedges, and flower gardens.Sweet Peas climb on wire fencing and arbors are covered with confederate jasmine in the spring.Open plots are used to cultivate produce for sale at the Farmers Market or to give to social services to help feed the hungry.

Tangible results can be seen by the increase in revenues from the High Springs Farmers Market over the years from $1, 805 in 2001 to $8, 291 in 2008.Both the Farmers Market and the Community Gardens, although self-sustaining, has provided measurable efficiencies in improved service deliveries by affording nutritional food access to low income families and food stamp recipients.Both the Farmers Market and the Community Gardens provide inexpensive cultural, social, health and extended economic benefits for the community.Educational opportunities are provided free to participants by the University of Florida IFAS, the Alachua County Agricultural Extension Office, Florida Yards and Neighborhoods Program, Bennett's True Value Hardware store and Ace Hardware on a variety of topics.

The City of High Springs Farmers Market and Community Gardens is an excellent example of a public program designed to create a sustainable community by encouraging partnerships between city government, other governmental agencies, non-profit agencies, local institutions of higher learning, farmers, artists, and musicians.This program benefits the City by providing weekly community social interaction at the market and the gardens; by developing friendships; by creating an attraction for tourists; by introducing a place for artists and musicians to share their media;by replacing littered overgrown properties and rights-of-way with gardens;by expanding knowledge to youth and adults regarding gardening techniques; by establishing a market for local farm products; and by offering an affordable source of food for our residents and the needy.Across the country, small rural cities, towns, and villages are struggling to provide healthy and sustainable communities.Through partnerships, local government can share responsibility and provide leadership to bring those ideas to fruition.

The City of High Springs is proud to share these innovative programs of the collaborative partnership of the High Springs Farmers Market and the Community Gardens.This program can easily be replicated as a model for other cities with creative modifications to suit the individual needs of the community.

City of High Springs Community Gardens Wins the FCCMA Program Excellence Award for Community Sustainability

FCCMA is the Florida City and County Management Association. The Community Sustainability Award recognizes innovative local government programs or processes that demonstrate creativity in balancing that community’s social, economic, environmental and cultural needs. This program award category was for cities with a population under 20,000. The City of High Springs Community Gardens Program was the award recipient at the FCCMA Annual Conference in St. Augustine on May 29, 2009. City Manager James Drumm accepted the award on behalf of the City. He thanked the Lys Burden, the Community Garden Coordinator, and all the volunteers who made this program a success.

The Downtown and Douglass Community Gardens are the heart of an innovative local government program designed to compliment and improve neighborhoods by reclaiming littered right-of-ways and vacant city lots with environmentally enhanced sites for urban agriculture, which also functions as community social centers for all age groups.

The Community Gardens are administered by the City of High Springs. The program originated through the High Springs Farmers Market. No skill level is required to steward a sustainable garden and lifestyle. Volunteer driven, the gardens were created by seed money from the City. Local residents for a small fee or no fee if on public assistance, can cultivate fruit and vegetables on small individual raised bed plots. They learn to grow high quality, high yield, organic, nutritious, vegetables and produce and at the same time grow their relationships with their neighbors who enhances neighborhood spirit and investment.

Community Gardens are attractive, rewarding and educational tools for the neighborhood. Seeds, recipes,and techniques are exchanged informally and at social gatherings in the gardens. Raised bed table-top plots are handicapped accessible. Common plots are used to cultivate produce for sale at the Farmers Market or to donate to Social Services to feed the hungry.

Community Gardens create sustainability by re-establishing neighborhood pride,friendships, beautification, education and quality organic produce.

Community Gardens are neighborhood green spaces set aside for local residents to grow their own fresh vegetables, to improve public nutrition and the neighborhood environment. The 4x 8-foot, raised-bed plots are available for $15 each per growing season or $25 per year (to cover the cost of irrigation and compost). Anyone on public assistance does not have to pay any fees. Neighborhood residents with any level of experience are encouraged to participate, from first-time gardeners to skilled growers. Anyone qualifying for plots must sign a contract, guaranteeing they will care for their garden plots responsibly. High yield, organic growing techniques with drip irrigation are used for cultivation.

For more information, call Sandi Richmond at 454-1416, ext. 6.

The annual planting schedule guideline is as follows:
Spring Planting: March 15
Autumn Planting: October 15