LA Community Garden Council - General Support

Founded in 1998, the Los Angeles Community Garden Council (LACGC) was established to create safe, green spaces in underserved urban neighborhoods. Over the past two decades, LACGC has transformed vacant lots into thriving community gardens, fostering food security, social connections, and environmental stewardship. Today, LACGC oversees a decentralized network of 47 community gardens with more than 2,000 members serving about 6,000 people across Los Angeles County.

In 2024, with a new executive director, LACGC shifted from a "hub-and-spoke" model to a decentralized, peer-to-peer network, where gardens function as "living laboratories." Each garden is in many ways an experimental space for testing different approaches to self-governance, food production, and community resilience. This new model allows for greater innovation and flexibility while maintaining a collective framework for learning and resource-sharing across the network.

Living Laboratories: Gardens as Experimental Hubs

Each garden operates as a living laboratory, experimenting with governance models, sustainability practices, and community-driven solutions. Some gardens prioritize food production, while others focus on becoming resiliency hubs with initiatives like cool zones to mitigate heat or water capture systems for sustainability. This decentralized framework empowers gardens to address the unique needs of their communities while contributing to larger, systemic goals like climate resilience and social equity.