Welcome to ColumbiaGardeners.com

What is Columbia Gardeners?

Columbia Gardeners, Inc. is a nonprofit organization providing gardening opportunities in Howard County.  We offer garden plots at three locations (Elkhorn, Long Reach, and West Side).  Currently, Columbia Gardeners serves gardeners with over 600 plots.
 
Our gardeners are an eclectic group, ranging from novice to experienced – from mother-daughter teams to seniors – and our gardeners represent countries from all over the world:  Burma, Japan, China, Haiti, Russia, the Ukraine and more.  We have gardeners who grew up on farms as well as city folk.  This wonderful mixture of backgrounds and experience and cultures helps make the gardening experience at Columbia Gardens fun, rewarding, and educational.
 
Each site offers garden plots that are approximately 20 X 25 feet, access to these plots by common pathways, centrally located water supplies, common compost bins, wood chips, parking, a locking entrance gate, and picnic tables.  Gardeners are responsible for fencing (except at the expansion plots at Elkhorn and Long Reach, both of which have a fence surrounding the entire set of new gardens), tilling/digging, planting, watering, weeding, and performing four hours of site service per plot per year.
 
In addition, Elkhorn and Long Reach sites have a new set of gardens surrounded by a fence for organic gardening.
 
We have a variety of social and educational events during the gardening year, April through October, including talks by Master Gardeners, talks by regional gardening experts, seed exchanges, garden work days, bird walks, butterfly walks, plant diagnostic workshops, garden tours, and picnics.