Active garden volunteers are key to a successful community garden. Become a Community Gardener to grow fresh, healthy vegetables, herbs, and more in the company of fellow volunteer gardeners. The Kirkwood Community Garden offers a variety of gardening opportunities for individuals and families with flexible scheduling. Review the Gardener Guidelines and complete the Community Gardener Application to get started. 

What to Expect 

The Kirkwood Community Garden is unlike your typical community garden. A typical community garden has singular plots for each individual and they have total autonomy and responsibility over that plot and what is grown in the limited space. Our community garden is a volunteer initiative that has everyone working together to plan, plant, water, and share the harvest together. It is a community volunteer project seeking to bring individuals together to work and serve each other as a community. There may be times where life happens and you can’t make it to the garden that day. That’s okay! We work together, help one another out, and serve our community one day at a time!

Supplies and Cost: This is a volunteer project so there is no cost to participate! Some gardeners may be interested in donating money to buy more plants or supplies, but there is no obligation to do so! All gardeners are of equal status whether they donate or not. The only "cost" is your time and energy. Communal hand tools and equipment are provided for Gardener’s use in the 14-shared plots, however gardeners are welcome to bring tools from home or donate tools to the garden.

Communications: Gardeners communicate via GroupMe. It is an app that is accessible via smart phone, tablet, and/or computer. It is recommended to have it on your phone. We use it to communicate garden updates, group decisions, and it is our primary means of communication.

Planning: Gardeners work together to create a garden plan in the beginning of the year/end of previous season. It may fluctuate through the season and all gardeners are welcome to be involved in the process.

Workload: Gardeners can expect to work 10-12 hours per month. This includes 3-4 workdays and 5-7 hours watering, per month. Watering varies with the seasons and some months may fluctuate (i.e. a dry summer needs more watering than a rainy spring). The more gardeners participate the lighter the workload becomes. Gardeners are encouraged to attend workdays to lighten the load, collaborate on garden decisions, and continue to learn gardening practices. Typical tasks other than watering include pest removal, planting, weeding, and harvesting.

Watering: The most common task is watering. Watering can take 1-2 hours per session and members work together to fill the schedule for the year. Gardeners can sign up for consecutive weeks, weekly intervals, and/or fill in days where no one signed up. All gardeners must sign up for watering dates and can expect to water 15-25 times over the course of the season. This number may fluctuate with weather, fellow gardener participation, and workday schedules. For example, gardeners may not have to water on days where a workday crew will be at the garden.

2026 Season Schedule Information

• The season runs from March to October.
• We start the season with a Kick-Off Meeting in March going over garden rules, communication, and more.
• We conclude the season with a clean up workday that prepares the garden for the off-season winter.
• As of right now, we have two workday groups that meet weekly:
  • Tuesday early evenings
  • Friday mornings
  • However, we are very open to adding another time if those don’t work for you. If there’s another time that works better for you, let us know and we can work to add another slot.

Pre-Season Instruction

This season we're aiming to offer pre-season instruction dates where we will learn about different gardening topics and discuss how to apply them to the Community Garden. These are entirely optional, but a great way for newer members to learn gardening basics and become more familiar with our unique garden.
Instruction dates will be sent out via Parks Volunteer Program Newsletter and added to this page. 

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Phone: (314) 984-5993 |  Email: kparkv@kirkwoodmo.org