Growing a successful garden and garden program involves careful consideration of hundreds of choices, from getting alignment within your team on budget and goals to what seeds to sow at different times of year in your climate.  Grow Your Lunch guides you through the entire process, whether your garden is currently just an idea or an established project needing support to become sustainable (economically, ecologically and with regard to maintenance and upkeep).

We’ve established and supported dozens of edible gardens and garden programs where we’ve documented and developed a set of best practices that are needed to make a garden prosper.  With this catalogue of resources at our fingertips, we assist your business, school community, or organization by customizing the designs of  both the garden and garden management systems to fit the needs of your site and stakeholders.

We customize our services for you through our two-phase framework  and make sure to provide ongoing support until your organization has a sustained, thriving garden.

 

Phase I –  The Garden Project = guidance through all phases of initiating and planning the project including:

      • Initial site visit, consultation and visioning with key stakeholders
      • Setting up systems of communication, decision-making and feedback with stakeholders
      • Budgeting for the initial project, first 3-5 years
      • Site visits for scoping the phases of implementation and siting the garden
      • Permitting guidance
      • Fundraising strategies
      • Garden infrastructure design or design bid review and selection
      • Oversight during build out or manage build out

 

Phase II – The Garden Program = facilitating the entire process of establishing a stand-alone program including the following:

      • Create customized, comprehensive, site specific garden handbook
      • Planting, harvesting calendars, record keeping methods
      • Garden website layout
      • K-12 garden curriculum development (for school programs)
      • Skill building program for maintenance
      • Scheduling, coordinating and logistics
      • Garden update after site visits
      • Garden aesthetic and integrity audit
      • Additional capacity building