Our COMMUNITY GARDEN
Our 2025 Community Garden season is about to begin! Please read our garden guidelines and complete your application below.
Our Community Garden is tended by volunteers who grow and harvest food to share amongst themselves as well as our local community food partners. Community Garden participants are volunteers who commit 3 hours to the garden per week, typically on Tuesdays or Saturdays, from March through October. See what’s happening in the Garden on our Events Calendar.
For more information about participation in the Community Garden program at Alder Creek Farm please review the Community Garden Guidelines. Still have questions? Contact our Garden Coordinator at gardencoordinator@nehalemtrust.org or call the Trust office at 503-368-3203.
We also have other opportunities with the Trust. If you would like to volunteer with our stewardship team or to help care for our Nehalem Ethnobotanical Teaching Trail, or participate in other ways, please 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.
OUR story
The Community Garden is a hands-on, sustainable food production program 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 50 volunteers who share the harvest with the families served by the North County Food Bank, Nehalem Bay Community Services, and Nehalem Bay Health Center outreach programs. Unlike a traditional community garden of independent efforts, gardeners work together as a team, some focused on special areas or activities in the garden, like tending the orchard, composting, duck tending, greenhouse management, and irrigation and maintenance.
The Community Garden at Alder Creek Farm demonstrates integrated food production practices for home and small farms. Among these practices are composting, mulching, the use of 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 helps to keep healthy food production close to home while bringing people together in support of sustainably grown 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. We partner with local schools and programs to host students and volunteer groups to the garden annually.
