join our community garden
Our community garden is tended by volunteers who grow and harvest food to share among themselves as well as with North County Food Bank. The community gardeners work together as a team rather than individually with separate plot ownership. Garden members pledge to work in the garden at Alder Creek Farm 3 hours per week. Garden work days are Tuesdays from March through October. See what’s happening in the Garden on our Events Calendar.
For more information about the Community Garden at Alder Creek Farm please read our Garden Brochure and review the Community Garden Guidelines. Still have questions, contact our Community Garden Coordinator karen@nehalemtrust.org or call the Trust office at 503-368-3203. For other volunteer opportunities, there are Open Garden Days and Stewardship Fridays. Visit our Volunteer page to find out more.
The video below, by the Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts, highlights Alder Creek Farm and our Community Garden – Why conserve land? Because food.
OUR story
The Community Garden is a hands-on, sustainable food production project that increases our community’s capacity to grow healthy, affordable, organic food. The garden’s berries, vegetables, herbs, fruit trees, and ducks are tended by 40 volunteers who share the harvest among themselves and with the families served by the North County Food Bank. Gardeners don’t tend individual plots, but rather everyone works together as a team while focusing on a special area of the garden, like brassicas, nightshades, or the orchard.
In the context of our unique regional ecology and economy, the community garden at Alder Creek Farm demonstrates integrated food production practices for home and small farms. Among these practices are composting, mulching, cover crops, worm composting, soil microorganisms, hoop houses, cloches, ducks as alternative pesticide control, plants to attract birds and pollinators, elk and deer fences, hedgerows, renewable irrigation, and rain water catchment systems. Native plants on site give community members an opportunity to learn more about local ecology and traditional medicinal and culinary plant uses.
Our community garden is helping to keep healthy food production close to home while bringing people together in support of organic produce for everyone. Some of our gardeners have gone on to start their own small-scale farms, which makes us especially proud of the work we do. Every April we hold a popular plant sale of healthy garden starts grown especially for our coastal climate. And annually scores of schoolchildren learn how to tend a garden for the first time at Alder Creek Farm.
