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Two community-garden leaders organize the annual calendar on a tool-shed wall.

Community gardens ยท Part 5 of 9

Run the Garden

Five guides for the people who keep a garden working year after year: roles and rules, workdays, leadership handoff, the annual calendar and the yearly audit.

See the 5 guides All nine parts

By Dan Whelan, founder of New World Survival

Researched from government agencies, university extension services, and other published sources. See our sources

Where to start

Who this part is for, and what to read first.

These are for coordinators, committee members and anyone who has said yes to a shared job.

How to Run a Community Garden sets out the operating system: roles, rules, records, money and conflict procedures. Read it first. Workdays and the operating calendar turn that system into dated tasks with named owners. Leadership succession protects it when people leave, and the annual health audit checks once a year whether it still holds.

A sensible first three

  1. How to Run a Community GardenStart with roles, rules and records.
  2. The Annual Community Garden Operating CalendarPut the year on one calendar.
  3. Leadership Succession and Preventing Founder BurnoutName a backup for every key role.

The guides

Run the Garden: 5 guides.

How to Run a Community Garden

Run a community garden with clear roles, fair rules, sound records, maintained tools and water, finances, conflict procedures, workdays and succession.

Read the guide

Volunteer Workdays and Maintenance Systems

Plan community garden workdays that turn real maintenance needs into safe, inclusive tasks with prepared tools, task leads, closeout records and new stewards.

Read the guide

Leadership Succession and Preventing Founder Burnout

Help a community garden survive leadership turnover with backup roles, shared records, secure account access, financial continuity, decision history and planned handoff.

Read the guide

The Annual Community Garden Operating Calendar

Build a community garden operating calendar that assigns deadlines, seasonal work, recurring maintenance, reviews and trigger-based tasks to named owners.

Read the guide

How to Conduct an Annual Garden Health Audit

Audit a community garden's land, governance, leadership, participation, finances, water, infrastructure, safety, records and capacity for the next year.

Read the guide

The rest of the library

The other eight parts.

Part 1 of 9

Start Here

Choose the right responsibility before choosing the next article.

Part 2 of 9

Find and Join

Locate a garden, judge fit, understand obligations and enter intelligently.

Part 3 of 9

Master Your Plot

Build the growing skills that transfer directly to a community plot.

Part 4 of 9

Start a Garden

Build land, access, infrastructure and operating systems before opening day.

Part 6 of 9

School and Institutional Gardens

Adapt the system to the host institution and the people it serves.

Part 7 of 9

Community Capacity

Build recurring systems that help gardeners teach, share and maintain useful resources.

Part 8 of 9

Resilience and Failure

Prepare for predictable disruptions and recover without pretending every problem is preventable.

Part 9 of 9

Use and Preserve the Harvest

Choose a preservation route that matches the food, evidence and safety controls.

About the author

Dan Whelan is the founder of New World Survival. He and his wife Vicki rode out Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and spent the week after sorting donations at a relief center in Homestead. More than thirty years of household preparedness later, he built this site to pass on what works. Read their story