Extension Brown County » Community Gardens

Learn about common methods for disease control, their pros and cons, and how you can adapt these techniques for use in your own home (or community) garden.

Design a native plant garden that will be a pollinator magnet.

Learn the process for identifying plant problems in your own trees, landscape and garden and be prepared for the next growing season! This online, self-paced course from the UW-Madison Division of Extension Horticulture Program explains the basics of the plant diagnostic process in an easy-to-understand way.

Want to start composting at home, but don't know where to start? That's where the UW-Extension Master Composter Home Study Course comes in.

Learn more about the advantages of container gardening and how to get your garden started here.

Planting for a Purpose is a program for gardeners to plant a plot and donate fresh produce to local food pantries. Any gardener, novice, or veteran, who wants to give back via gardening can get involved. 

Learn more and sign up here!

View the 2021 Community Garden mid-season newsletter.  If you are a gardener, please read it over for program news and information, as well as some important notes about garden closing.  Special thanks to gardener Maryann Bricker for the beautiful newsletter design work!

August 5th marked Brown County Community Gardens' 25th anniversary. The program was started in 1996 to increase food security and decrease hunger in Brown County. Today the program has 250 gardeners who attend 400 plots in 12 gardens around the county. Produce grown is consumed in local households, donated to local food pantries and sold at farmers' markets.

To celebrate the anniversary, residents planted a pollinator garden at the Green Bay Community Church garden site on Thursday, August 5th. View the news segment here!

Since the Olde North Community Garden opened in 2014, Schroeder’s Flowers has donated its time and resources to fill two onsite water tanks for gardeners to water their plants. However, during the hot summer months, tanks would empty quickly, and the community gardens’ board identified installing permanent water access at its Olde North garden as a program priority. The program asked local excavating company A G Excavating Inc. for a quote on this project, and owner Al Gossen volunteered to cover the cost of water installation and built and installed a water station in time for the 2021 growing season! Thank you, A G Excavating, for being part of our gardening community!

Thanks to a generous donation of materials and volunteer time from the Green Bay West Rotary Club, the Brown County Community Gardens Program now has 10 new tabletop garden beds. On April 30, Rotary Club members spent the day building and installing these beds at two of the program’s garden locations, in time for the start of the 2021 growing season. Tabletop garden beds allow community members with more limited mobility to participate in the community gardens program, as they can garden while standing upright.

With the installation of these beds, the program offers nearly 400 garden plots at 13 locations throughout the county. A limited number of plots are still available and can be rented by applying online at browncountycommunitygardens.org.

Thank you, Green Bay West Rotary, for helping the community grow!

The Brown County Community Gardens Program and Green Bay Packers Give Back continue to encourage gardeners to donate fresh garden produce to local pantries through their Planting for a Purpose program. As part of this effort, Wisconsin Certified Seed Potatoes again donated seed potatoes to distribute for free to gardeners willing to donate at least half of their potato harvest to a food pantry. Planting for a Purpose distributed 250 pounds of seed potatoes during the first weeks of May and hopes to increase donations from the 898 pounds harvested and donated in 2020.

Have extra produce? Sign up now to donate.

The Planting for a Purpose Program promotes gardening and encourages fresh produce donations to food pantries in need. This growing season, the Green Bay Packers and Brown County Community Gardens are partnering for the fifth year of the Planting for a Purpose Program to encourage community members to plant a garden plot and donate fresh produce to local food pantries. 

Read the full press release here.

Sign up and pledge to donate a portion of your harvest here.

The pandemic has disrupted how we do things on so many levels. In 2020 some gardeners were not able to get the seeds they wanted due to increased demand and staffing shortages at seed companies. While seed companies expect to be better prepared this year, it is not too early plan your garden now and get your seed order in for the 2021 growing season!

Here are a few to help you get the seeds in time for spring planting, according to Jay Dampier with the Extension Horticulture Program. 

In the past few years, Brown County's Church Road Community Garden has become increasingly difficult for gardeners to access, as the dirt road leading into the garden has become more and more rutted. The community gardeners' board of directors allocated funds to fix the worst ruts this year, but did not have funding to repair the whole road. The program hired A G Excavating Inc to complete the repair work, and this generous company surprised the program and its gardeners by repairing the entire road for no additional cost! Thank you, A G Excavating Inc, for helping us help people grow their own food. Gardeners cannot wait to use the new road in the 2021 growing season!

Each year, new gardeners who receive a raised garden bed from the New Leaf Garden Blitz program have the opportunity to be paired with an experienced gardener through the Brown County Community Gardens Program's garden mentorship program. In 2020, 10 new Blitz gardeners, including both individuals and organizations, met with volunteer mentors throughout the growing season. Pairs covered topics ranging from garden planning and planting to pest control, harvest, and preparing for the end of the season. One gardener shared "It was so great having a mentor as our source of knowledge and our cheerleader. She was always so excited about everything we did and she was so encouraging, assuring us that we had a natural skill for gardening."
 
The goal of the mentorship program is to help new gardeners build gardening knowledge and confidence so they can garden independently in the future, and, out of 2020 mentees responding to an end-of-season survey, 100 percent said they would continue to garden in the future.
 

The Diocese of Green Bay selected the Brown County Community Gardens Program as a 2020 recipient of its CRS (Catholic Relief Services) Rice Bowl grant. CRS is the international charitable arm of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Funds for the grants come from an annual collection in the diocese. Seventy-five percent of the funds collected go to CRS work overseas, and 25 percent is awarded locally to support immigrants and refugees.
 
The community gardens program received funds to purchase plants and seeds from local greenhouses to share with its participating gardeners, many of whom are immigrants and refugees. Additional funds were also awarded for other garden projects. Thank you to Diocese of Green Bay CRS Rice Bowl grant for helping our gardeners grow!

Make sure your surplus garden produce doesn't go to waste by participating in Planting for a Purpose, a joint project of the Green Bay Packers and Brown County to encourage gardeners to donate fresh produce to food pantries. Planting for a Purpose participants have reported 3,126 pounds of produce donated so far this season. That’s over TEN times the 281 pounds reported at this time last year!
 
Many local pantries accept fresh produce donations and have need for more donations to meet clients' needs. Need is especially great this year. Help make sure everyone has the fresh fruits and vegetables they need by signing up to participate here.

Harvest season is underway! Have extra fruits and vegetables from your garden? Make sure your surplus produce doesn't go to waste by participating in Planting for a Purpose, a joint project of the Green Bay Packers and Extension Brown County to encourage gardeners to donate fresh produce to food pantries.
 
Many local pantries accept fresh produce donations and have need for more donations to meet clients' needs. Need is especially great this year. Help make sure everyone has the fresh fruits and vegetables they need by signing up to participate here.