[Community_garden] Locking garden gates?

[Pohl-Kosbau, Leslie]

An observation:

Locks may seem to be not very friendly, but we lock our houses now, when
most of us didn't 50 years ago in smaller cities.
Even a few of our Portland Gardens that have resisted locks for the past
5-30 years have asked for them to be installed. Hospitality to neighbors can
be intentional, so that the garden site is open during certain hours, for
tours, for events, and work parties.

Persistent theft can demoralize a community garden. It really is up to the
participants to make the hard decision to protect their site without seeming
to be isolated from the rest of the world or from each other. 

Leslie Pohl-Kosbau
Portland Community Gardens

-----Original Message-----
From: Don Boekelheide [mailto:dboekelheide at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 2:55 PM
To: community_garden at list.communitygarden.org
Subject: [Community_garden] Locking garden gates?

Hi, all,

Recent posts about theft prompt me to write about our recent decision to
lock our garden gates. The decision did not come easily, and has caused hard
feelings on both sides. The lock supporters are very sure of the need, and
lock opponents equally sure that it sends an exclusionary message and won't
work.

But now that it is a "done" deal, I wonder belatedly what other people do.

Do you have locks on your garden gates? If so, how do you manage them? What
kinds of locks? How do you allow "nice" people to visit? 

(If you don't have locks, why not?)

Second, how effective are locks? I've read (was it in the research done by
Mark Frances some years back?) that most CG theft comes from "inside" the
garden, not outside - is that accurate, do you think? 

If you have locks, how do you handle:

1. Making sure that the whole community knows that they are welcome (if they
don't rip things off), and discouraging the perception that the community
garden is one group "taking advantage" of public resources for personal
gain? 

2. Addressing problems of rotting produce left by gardeners who don't
harvest (I liked Doreen's answer to this).

3. Dealing with "inside" unauthorized harvesting?

4. Addressing problems of security- are gardens safer with locked gates?

5. Dealing with hungry and impoverished people who see the food and are
tempted by it?

Has anyone gotten rid of locks? Why?

Overall, do you think they work? Are they worth the hassle?

About us:

Our community garden is a half acre site with 55 beds, most 20x20. It is in
an open field on public parkland, beside a road with pulses of heavy traffic
during the morning and afternoon commute and modest traffic otherwise. There
is very little pedestrian traffic. Gardener drive to the garden. The closest
house is across the road (the old farmhouse), otherwise the site is pretty
isolated though surrounded by suburban development near UNC Charlotte. The
garden is surrounded by a 6 ft "nice" chain link fence (black paint). We
have not had locks for 3 years. The locks chosen are "spin" combination
locks, similar to the ones used in Portland, OR (I believe).

Several gardeners have become very concerned about being "ripped off", and
some have reported seeing sinister looking pickup trucks and cars driving up
to the garden and then speeding off. Also, some gardeners say that strangers
have stopped and come into the garden with plastic bags (like the example in
the recent theft discussion), asking "How does this work? Do you sell? Is
this a community garden? Does that mean I can take what I need?" 

Also, the disagreement over whether or not to lock has prompted some very
troubling disharmony within the gardener community. Any thoughts on how to
handle it when one "faction" gets its way and really doesn't feel like
listening to the "other side", such as an individual or "counterfaction",
who persistently keeps raising questions, alternatives and objections even
after a decision has been made?

Don
www.urbanministrycenter.org
(this is for the community garden where I'm a member, at Reedy Creek, not
the Urban Ministry garden)


      

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