One of the most consequential decisions you will make when starting a garden is who you chose to share gardening responsibilities with. Notions of sustainability can seem terribly abstract, but the moment you begin to think about starting a garden making the endeavor sustainable has some very practical implications for who you want to the gardening partners you want to seek out.

For instance, assume you can handle ninety percent of your garden’s care and upkeep. Now, imagine that for ten consecutive days (the remaining ten percent of the summer) you find yourself away due to work, because of a family emergency, or because you get sick. That is enough time for almost everything in your garden to die if the weather fails to help. Here, the difference between success and failure might simply be a few other people willing to water in a pinch.

Or take another example. Perhaps you love doing research, ordering supplies, and laying out gardens; however, everything you seek to grow dies. Then, it would be helpful to look for a partner with a green thumb.

In this vein, here are some skills that you might want to think about ensuring your group includes, however small or large it ends up being:

• ADVISORS: It is handy to have someone who may not be able to do much around the garden but who you can go to with questions and for advice. Being one garden among a community of other gardens is helpful in this respect. Fellow gardeners are often more than willing to assist you with everything from suggestions with what to plant, to a knowledge of pests and diseases you will need to guard against, to advice on how to mount those defenses.
  
• PLANNERS: Gardens can fail before they ever get put in the ground. They can fail because the crops planted fail to match the available sun, fit the soil, or are inappropriate for the climate or planting season. They can fail because the garden is poorly laid out – crops planted to close together, planted on the wrong side of a downhill slope, planted without the appropriate companions, etc. . . . The people who do the garden planning could be among the core group who tend the garden throughout the growing season. It might be an advisor from another group who is willing to help guide you through your initial planning and planting. It might even be someone who has no desire to set foot in the garden with any frequency. Regardless, every garden needs someone who is good at planning.
  
• PINCH HITTERS: A group of people willing to step in and water every once in awhile if the main gardeners cannot make it for some reason. If you are in a community garden setting, once you get to know other gardeners, they will often be willing to water for a day or two if you are willing to do the same for them should the need arise.
  
• THE CORE: A central set of two to five people willing to step in periodically and do the main work of gardening that is best done in a group because many hands makes light work – think people you would like to call on the day you need to till the soil, the five or six days near the start who will be willing to help weed until the main crops have established themselves, to care for the garden for a week before those duties shift to someone else, etc.
  
• ONE TIMERS: Some people may only be able to help with the garden once a season. Maybe they will help on the day of tilling. Perhaps they can only come on major harvest days, say when its time to pull up the potatoes and carrots. Maybe they will oversee getting the food harvested to the pantries or other organizations that you plan to donate to.
  
• A SOCIAL SECRETARY: Umoja Unity Gardens are, at root, inviting, communal spaces. Having someone or several such people who are great at organizing gatherings, celebrations, parties, and social outreach are every bit as important as the gardens. With Umoja Gardens growing strong group and emotional ties is as important as growing strong crops

Do not think that these role requirements are suggesting the need for a large group to be successful. Two or three people may be able to check the boxes necessary to meet all these needs. In which case great!

Your group may start lacking people who can fill all these roles, as long as someone in the group is willing to dive in and acquire missing skills on the fly or as long as you can find people to fill those skill as the need arises.

But again, keeping in mind the central idea of an Umoja Unity Garden, the more people you have helping with the garden, even on a one-time basis, the more people you will have who become vested in the endeavor and who turn out, along with their friends, to share and listen to each other’s’ stories when the times for celebration, sharing, remembrance, and perhaps even reconciliation come.

Here’s wishing you all the best as you begin your Umoja gardening journey. And if you think of anything we have missed that might help others gardeners as they begin their own journey, please feel free to make suggestions below tis post.