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Community Gardens

Philadelphia’s urban farms and community gardens are critical to alleviating hunger and providing communities with greater access to fresh, healthy, and culturally appropriate foods. 

Our Support for Community Gardens

Urban agriculture, which includes community gardens, school gardens, and production farms, increases access to fresh produce while strengthening social connections between neighbors. PHS helps more than 200 community gardens, urban farms, and grow spaces to improve the quality of life in local neighborhoods.

PHS offers:

  • Resources to serve neighborhoods with fresh, nutrient-dense culturally relevant produce grown with sustainable and organic practices
  • Organic growing supplies
  • Access to tools
  • Educational resources
  • Technical Assistance
  • Volunteer Support
  • Workshops

Connect with Gardens

The Greater Philadelphia region has a robust and long tradition of urban agriculture rooted in BIPOC, immigrant, and refugee growers and communities. These community gardens and urban farms are part of a vast urban agriculture network in the region. 

Photos of the Norris Square Neighborhood Project Gardens, a collection of Puerto Rican gardens around the Norris Square neighborhood in August 2025.

Interested in learning more about starting a community garden or joining an existing one? Explore how you can get involved in all our urban agriculture programs! See the latest activities in action in Norristown at the PHS Community Farm at Norristown Farm Park.

Learn about PHS Community Farm

PHS supports established gardens and grow sites to expand their vegetable production capacity and share harvests with food pantries, mutual aid groups, and local community members through our City Harvest Program. Participating farms and gardens have access to seedlings and other inputs such as row cover, stakes for trellising and more in order to grow abundant harvests for donation. To date our impact includes 500,000 lbs of produce, $800,000 of value or 4 million servings of vegetables numbers.

Interested in getting involved with PHS? Click the link below to learn more!

Get Involved with PHS

Services for Community Gardens

PHS works to increase access to fresh, healthy food throughout the Greater Philadelphia region by offering resources to the urban agriculture community, most importantly community gardens and urban farms. Services include educational workshops, agroecological production supplies and materials, seedlings, access to the PHS McLean Urban Agriculture Tool Library at Glenwood Green Acres, technical assistance, volunteer assistance, infrastructure improvements, and more for your communal grow space.

Additionally, we work with gardens and farms at every stage — whether it is just getting started or long-established — to offer support services tailored to the needs of the space and create specialized approaches to set and achieve attainable garden goals.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1

Fill out an Interest Form

Your Garden Leader or Leaders express an interest in joining the PHS Community Gardens Program by completing a brief interest form below.

Please note that at this time we are only accepting interest forms from gardens or groups in and around Philadelphia.  We cannot guarantee all gardens interested in the program will be selected due to resource and staff limitations.   

Interest Form

Step 2

Speak to a PHS Community Gardens Staff Person; PHS staff will follow to schedule a phone call or site visit to discuss the program and your individual needs.

 

Step 3

Participate in our Garden Tenders Workshop Series

We strongly encourage any garden or gardener interested in joining our program to participate in either our Fall or Spring Garden Tenders Series – a six-week course designed to support those interested in starting or sustaining a community garden and grow space.  We can help your garden be even more successful in managing the space, people, and resources. Please visit our event calendar for the next Garden Tenders class.

 

*In certain cases we will waive the Garden Tenders requirement for well established community gardens.

Learn about our events

Step 4

Graduate from Garden Tenders and complete an in-depth application

Share more details about your garden’s culture, current growing operations, goals and areas where you need assistance or support.

Step 5

Join the PHS Community Gardens network and start accessing PHS resources.

PHS City Harvest

Gardens and grow sites enrolled in the PHS Community Gardens Program with at least a full season partnering with us are eligible to apply to PHS’s City Harvest initiative.

PHS’s City Harvest initiative supports growers and community gardeners to increase the production and accessible distribution of organic, culturally relevant, locally grown produce. By participating in City Harvest your site will receive organic vegetable seedlings, direct sow seeds, organic pest control supplies, and other items to grow food for donation.  Eligibility expectations include: one season or more of active participation in the PHS Community Gardens Program, and willingness to grow and share harvest with your local community

Since its inception 20 years ago, City Harvest participants have donated and shared thousands of pounds of locally grown organic produce to their communities.  We offer gardening and organic growing workshops throughout the year taught by local leaders in the urban agriculture community. With our partners at  Neighborhood Gardens Trust, we work with community gardens to protect vital open spaces and ensure a healthy and just food system in Philadelphia.

Photos of the Norris Square Neighborhood Project Gardens, a collection of Puerto Rican gardens around the Norris Square neighborhood in August 2025.

PHS Green Resource Centers

In close collaboration with community partners, PHS operates five Green Resource Centers (GRCs).  The GRCs are local community hubs where PHS propagates and distributes thousands of organic vegetable seedlings for community gardens and production sites enrolled in our programs.  The GRCs also serve as spaces for workshops, volunteering and much more.

Each of our Green Resource Centers is available to gardens and grow sites active in our programs. If you are interested in getting involved contact us or learn about becoming a volunteer.

Volunteer with PHS

PHS’s Green Resource Center at Awbury Arboretum 

Location: The Farm at Awbury 6336 Ardleigh Street, Philadelphia, PA,
Visit Google Maps
Year Established: 2006
Dimensions: 26’x60’ greenhouse
Partner(s): Weaver’s Way Farms / Awbury Arboretum 
Other Facts:

  • Includes additional hardening off house
  • The PHS GRC at Awbury helped Weaver’s Way to expand their farm operations and propagate 55,000 seedlings annually to serve PHS affiliated sites in NW, NE and North Philadelphia.
AWBURY ARBORETUM

PHS’s Green Resource Center at Bartram’s Garden / Sankofa Community Farm

Location: Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden 5400 Lindbergh Blvd., Philadelphia, PA, Visit Google Maps
Year Established: 2011

Dimensions: 30’x60’ greenhouse
Partner(s): Bartram’s Garden / Sankofa Community Farm
Other Facts:

  • Includes hardening off structure.
  • Material storage for garden support
  • Built capacity of Sankofa Farm and Southwest Build a Bed Program and provides 55,000 seedlings annually to serve PHS affiliated gardens in Center City, South Philly, and West / Southwest Philly.
BARTRAM'S GARDEN

PHS’s Green Resource Center at Strawberry Mansion

Location: 3212 Ridge Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, Visit Google Maps
Year Established: 2019
Dimensions: 30’x60’ greenhouse
Partner(s): East Park Revitalization Alliance (EPRA), Neighborhood Gardens Trust (NGT), Strawberry Mansion CDC
Other Facts:

  • Includes solar array
  • Composting toilet
  • Rolling hoop house (20’x48’)
  • Shade structure
  • Helped build capacity for five Strawberry Mansion-based gardens and serves the entire region as a propagation and resource hub with PHS’s other GRCs.  Propagates 140,000 seedlings annually.
  • Supports on site community garden and Strawberry Mansion High School’s Culinary Arts program.

PHS’s Urban Agriculture Tool Lending and Green Resource Center at Glenwood

Location: 1801 W Glenwood Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, Visit Google Maps
Year Established: 2019
Dimensions: Two 10×20’ modified shipping containers
Partner(s): Neighborhood Gardens Trust / Glenwood Green Acres Community Garden
Other Facts:

  • Home of PHS’s McLean Urban Agriculture Tool Library with over 500 tools available to rent for gardens enrolled in our Community Gardens Program.
  • The GRC also supports growers and gardeners with organic growing supplies including soil, compost, mulch, organic pest control materials, trellising supplies and lumber for raised beds.
  • The Tool Library is fully off the grid and operates with 9 panel solar array.
  • Please note, the tool library is only available to gardens and grow sites registered in the PHS Community Gardens Program.

PHS Community Farm at Norristown Farm Park

Location: 530 W Germantown Pike, East Norriton, PA, Visit Google Maps
Year Established: 2020
Dimensions: 30’x60′
Partner(s): Montgomery County, DCNR
Other Facts:

  • 2-acre teaching and production farm with fruit orchard and high tunnel
  • Walk-in cooler and hardening off structure
  • Pavilion and wash station
  • Community garden with over 50 families and groups
NORRISTOWN FARM PARK

Related

Community Gardens Education

At PHS, there are numerous opportunities to learn about community gardening through workshops, through PHS Garden Tenders, and PHS Green City Teachers. Explore all the ways you can get involved today.

Participate in a Program

The Garden Stewardship Institute (GSI)

This 8-week hybrid program is a partnership between The Neighborhood Gardens Trust and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, intended to strengthen community garden stewardship and leadership. GSI aims to equip community garden leaders with the knowledge and skills necessary to grow their gardening community and permanently sustain these shared public spaces.

GSI is for reserved for garden leaders from sites actively enrolled in PHS Community Gardens program, or who are preserved by NGT (or in the process). If you are interested in starting a new garden group, or interested in joining the program please fill out an interest form (add link).

Over the course of 8 sessions, participants will learn how to:

-Engage with fellow garden leaders to address common concerns and celebrate strengths.
-Assess their leadership style and embrace ways to share power that uplifts community needs and the garden’s culture.
-Grow community capacity and protect your garden through effective stewardship and communication
-Learn the basics of trauma-informed community care and conflict transformation
-Develop action plans for better organization, new initiatives, partnerships, and leadership succession.

Contact the PHS Community Gardens Team at communitygardens@pennhort.org to learn more.

Contact the PHS Community Gardens team

Contact Us