Master Composters Community Gardens

Recycling and waste reduction benefit everyone, not just by saving money, but also by improving the quality of life throughout our community. The waste reducing strategies of the PLANT program – home composting, smart landscaping and soil building and toxics reduction – are also making a growing difference in strengthening neighborhoods here in the Piedmont.

PLANT's community outreach strategy begins with the MCPLANT Master Composter volunteer program. These skill-trained community volunteers apply their training in projects in their home neighborhood, their workplace or a community institution such as a school, nature center or community garden.

Community gardens are springing up all over Mecklenburg County.

Bottle art in the garden.

PLANT also works directly with a number of Park and Recreation and community garden programs to spread the word about the benefits of PLANT techniques.

In addition to our demonstration sites at the Nature Centers in Reedy Creek and Latta Parks and at the Nature Museum, you'll find PLANT working at:

Urban Ministries

The Urban Ministries Community Garden at 945 College St., provides a gardening space for community members who are homeless. For many, the garden provides a healing place to find solid footing. The garden, with county compost enriching the soil, provides fresh organic vegetables and herbs for the soup kitchen at the Urban Ministry.

The garden also boasts a bottle tree, the uniquely Southern 'poor person's stained glass window', created with bottles from the recycling program, and a soil stabilization and beautification program using native plants. Children from Trinity Episcopal School, volunteers from the Charlotte Area Peace Corps Association (CAPCA), Winghaven Garden, Americorps and Myers Park Methodist's Charlotte Green project have all been partners in the garden.

Community garden at Urban Ministries.

The Cornelius Community Garden Program,
Robbins Park Community Garden

The Park and Recreation Department of the Town of Cornelius is opening the first publicly sponsored community garden in the Charlotte region, with support from PLANT. In addition to generous 20' x 20' garden plots where gardeners can grow flowers, herbs and vegetables, the garden will serve as a training center for PLANT classes, as well as classes in organic gardening, butterfly and bird gardens, and other topics.

The soil for the garden was enriched with high quality municipal compost from Compost Central, and mulched with the county's hardwood mulch.

The garden is located in Robbins Park on West Catawba Avenue , a half-mile south of the intersection of W. Catawba and Westmoreland.

Information for organic gardening classes on vegetables for the Piedmont can be obtained through PLANT co-founder and Organic Gardening Magazine's Zone 7 correspondent, Don Boekelheide.

To find out more about organic gardening classes or your own place in a community garden, please call Karen Ulmer at Cornelius Park and Recreation, alexandr.chentsov@gmail.com or visit the website  to register.