It is about the governance of your community garden…. it’s about social design rather than site design although it does cover management of the site in general.

The Plan was developed through participatory processes with the cooperation of teams setting up new community gardens. As a participatory design process developed over a number of years, approaches adopted in its development included World Cafe, the Workshop Method , structured conversation and strategic questioning.

The need for establishing governance processes for new community gardens has been evident for some time. It has become apparent over the years that the lack of clear means of dealing with conflict and with dominating personalities in community gardens can drive away gardeners and even lead to the abandonment of gardens. The need for establishing some kind of agreement among gardeners about conduct, decision making processes and resolving disagreement is a learning of community gardening.

Another reason for developing the Plan was that some local governments ask for a plan of management as part of their application for assistance in community gardening process.

This Plan of Management template was produced by Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network in March 2011. 

The Plan will be reviewed from time to time and changes made. We welcome your feedback on using the plan so that timely changes can be made.

Other attachments: 

CG_POM_template.doc