A well-designed and located community garden can make any neighborhood more attractive and even boost property values. A 2008 article in Real Estate Economics found that in New York City, a 6,000-square-foot community garden added 3.4% in value to a property located next to the garden. After five years, the same garden added 7.4% to property next to the garden and 1.9% to property 1,000 feet away.
Garden groups

Some 18,000 to 20,000 people nationwide, according to the American Community Gardening Association, are planting vegetables and flowers in parks, vacant lots, schools, office parks, and even cemeteries. If you’re looking for a perfect community garden spot, here are some things to keep in mind.
Locate land for your garden

Start the search by walking, biking, or driving around your neighborhood. Consider a site that offers six to eight hours of sun each day. Some shade is OK if you intend to plant flowers as well as food. Gardening is easier if the site is flat, and less expensive if there’s a ready source of water—a building spigot, a fire hydrant, or a well.

Also consider the convenience of volunteers. Is the site near parking or public transportation? Are there nearby restrooms? Is there a place in the shade for benches?

Have your soil tested, especially if you’re gardening in an urban area. Tests look for two things: the presence of any contaminates—like lead—that might make the soil unsuitable, and the chemical composition of the soil, which will help you know what types of fertilizers and soil additions you’ll need. Your university agricultural extension or your park district can often help you test the soil.

Last but not least, consider a site that won’t arouse opposition. Gardens can be messy (compost piles) and smelly (fertilizers), so you may not want to put your garden near buildings or in an open space with lots of passersby.

Community gardens vary in size greatly because of local land availability. Some are as large as 25,000 square feet. Others fall in the 2,000 to 4,000-square-foot range, says Bill Maynard, vice president of the Community Gardening Association.

Get permission to garden
Once you’ve found a promising spot, make contact with the owner. This approval process is often more complicated if you want to garden on public land like a park or school. Check with your local parks or recreation department or school district for specific requirements and deadlines to submit a request to garden. Some cities require that you conduct public hearings and submit a garden design and budget before you can receive a permit.

If you can, draw up a lease between your garden group and the land’s owner. The longer the better, advises Sally McCabe, community education project manager for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. It can take several years to improve the soil and get a garden going, so get a lease for at least five years.

A lease can also spell out rent, if any, and who will pay for costs like property taxes, water, and insurance. In many cases, a landowner will be willing to donate most or all of these costs to the garden.

Divide up the space
Assigning individual plots requires less management. It also lets each plot holder decide what to plant and when and how to garden. On the downside, allotments don’t offer as much opportunity to build a social network or to share costs. Even in an allotment system, you might want to ask volunteers to donate one day a month for garden clean-up tasks, suggests Laura Berman, author of How Does Our Garden Grow: A Guide to Starting a Community Garden.

Communal gardening, where everyone works the space, requires coordination and keeping volunteers motivated, says Maynard. On the plus side, a communal garden lets you concentrate efforts on the most important work that week—weeding or watering, for instance.

Develop a design
There’s no set size for a community garden, but you’ll want to match the size to the number of volunteers. A 10 x 10-foot or 20 x 20-foot plot is often the allotment size for each volunteer.

Draw out the design using graph paper or an expensive landscape design software program like the HGTV Home & Landscape Platinum Suite. Then transfer the blueprint to the site using stakes and twine to lay out rows.

Factor paths of about three feet between rows for workers and wheelbarrows. Paths can be as simple as mulch laid over cardboard. Add benches where volunteers can rest. If you have space, add a shed for storing tools with an overhang that provides shade. Include a rain barrel to save on water.

Raised beds offer an option if you’re working with poor soils. Beds should be between 8 and 10 inches deep to allow for root formation, says Charlie Nardozzi, horticulturist and spokesperson for the National Gardening Association. Higher beds of two to three feet are a plus for elderly or disabled gardeners.

Decide what to plant
Whether you grow vegetables, flowers, or both, involve volunteers in the decision. What and when you plant depends on your location. Easy-to-grow plants like summer squash, bush beans, peppers, lettuces, greens, and tomatoes are good crops even for beginners, says Nardozzi. Many of these plants can be started from seed either inside or grown directly in the garden. Root crops like carrots and beets are harder to transplant and should be planted directly in the soil.

If you’d rather have the ease of plants, many garden centers will donate unsold plants if you’re willing to wait until later in the growing season.

Garden costs and time commitment
Start-up costs can run about $3,750 to $7,500 if you have a nearby source of water, says Maynard, higher if not. A large garden in a public park with city fees and prevailing wages for contractors could run as high as $30,000.

In terms of time commitment, as the organizer, you can expect to spend 20 to 30 hours a month for six to eight months to get a garden going, Maynard says. Once your garden is planted, it’ll take a few hours a week to maintain, Nardozzi says.

But the land will pay you back for all your efforts: A 4 x 16-foot bed can yield $200 to $600 year in produce, depending on climate, says Bobby Wilson, president of Community Gardening Association, not to mention good will.

You don’t need to be a house inspector to know that puddles in the basement or a lake on the front lawn are signs of drainage trouble. But not all drainage problems are so obvious. Some can be hard to spot unless you know what to look for. Here’s how the pros read seven of the more subtle signs of potential water damage, and why you’ll save big bucks if you tackle these problems now instead of later.
1. Malfunctioning gutters

Rain cascading over the edge of a gutter means that dead leaves and debris are blocking the flow. But that’s not the only sign of malfunctioning gutters. Mud spattered on siding or paint peeling off the house in vertical strips are other indications. If left unchecked, overflowing gutters can rot siding, ruin paint jobs, even cause structural damage.

Best case: Leaves are clogging the downspout, and you just need to clear them out or hire a pro to do it (about $75).

Worst case: Gutters are undersized or improperly pitched and need to be replaced or reinstalled. That could run a few thousand dollars, but it’s still cheaper than new siding.
2. Downspouts that dump

Each inch of rain that falls on 1,000 square feet of a house produces more than 600 gallons of runoff, enough to fill 10 bathtubs to the brim. Dumping that much water too close to the foundation can send it right into the basement, where it can ruin furnishings and flooring and damage mechanical equipment.

Best case: You can add gutter extensions (about $10 for a 10-foot length) to carry the water at least five feet away from the house.

Worst case: The downspouts drop straight down behind large shrubs or other obstacles. An installer may be able to relocate the downspouts (about $150 for each one moved). If not, you’ll need to uproot landscaping to add extensions or underground piping—a sacrifice worth considering if you’ve got water infiltrating the basement.
3. Water stains in the basement

Depending on where the stain appears, you can tell whether the problem is caused by surface water, which can be easy to deal with, or water traveling underground, a more complex situation.

Best case: Stains are high on the foundation wall, indicating that the water is coming (or once came) from an overflowing gutter or surface water directed at the house.

Worst case: The stain extends in a line around the basement, indicating a high-water mark that may recur when heavy rains hit, either because of underground water or because the basement floor lies below the level of municipal storm drains that back up. In that case, an interior drain system and sump pump (around $3,000) are essential for getting the water out if the problem can’t be resolved some other way.
4. Cracks in the foundation

Hairline cracks, as thin as thread, are just cosmetic. Bigger cracks may or may not spell trouble. It depends on the width of the crack, how deep it penetrates, and whether it’s growing.

Best case: A crack appears where the builders finished installing one load of concrete and began pouring the next. Such cracks usually don’t penetrate all the way through. And even if they do, as long as they’re stable you can patch them with hydraulic cement or polyurethane caulk for less than $20.

Worst case: Cracks are continuing to widen, indicating that a drainage problem may be ruining the foundation. Call a structural engineer (not a contractor or waterproofing expert) to diagnose the problem, assess the risk, and suggest a repair.
5. Flaking and deposits on walls

If you see areas of white or gray crust on the basement walls, that’s efflorescence, mineral deposits left behind by evaporating water. Or the wall may be flaking off in big patches, a condition called spalling.

Best case: The efflorescence points to a place where moisture is condensing. It doesn’t cause structural problems, but you may want to scrape off the crust if it looks ugly.

Worst case: The wall is spalling because water is getting inside the masonry. Spalling can be just superficial, but if it’s deep and widespread, it may be a sign of freeze/thaw damage that could progressively weaken the foundation.
6. Mildew in the attic

The attic might seem like a strange place to look for drainage problems, but mildew on the underside of the roof can be a tipoff to serious trouble at the ground level.

Best case: Bathroom fans are spewing hot air directly into the attic, where it condenses on the cold back side of the roof and causes mildew. Venting the fan through an outside wall or the roof (about $200) solves the problem.

Worst case: Moisture from the basement or crawl space is rising through the house and condensing on the underside of the roof. In that case, you’ve got to find and stop the source of the dampness under the house. Then you may have to replace roof sheathing and shingles, a job that runs $6,000 to $9,000 for the typical house.
7. Migrating mulch

When soil doesn’t drain properly, rain may run off in sheets, carving gulleys in the landscape, dumping silt on pathways, and carrying piles of mulch or wood chips where they don’t belong.

Best case: For a few hundred dollars, you can hire a landscaper to create a simple berm (a soil mound) or swale (a wide, shallow ditch) to redirect the water flow away from the house.

Worst case: You notice the problem when your concrete patio cracks, or paving stones start popping up, because the gravel or sand base material has washed away. After redirecting the water, you’ll need to excavate the patio and start again.