The non-profit organization Community Gardens of Santa Clarita is blooming into its fifth year of providing the Santa Clarita community with a place for residents to come together and promote the benefits of locally grown organic food that is environmentally friendly, sustainable and cost effective.

The city of Santa Clarita along with the Community Garden Council launched the project in 2011, which now hosts an impressive 134-plot spread of land located at Central Park, 27150 Bouquet Canyon Road. The garden enables residents who sign up as members to enjoy their own fresh, pesticide and preservative free vegetables, harvested from their own rented plots. Members can request a 10’ x 10’ or 10’ x 20’ plot depending on the availability. Various herbs and flowers are also grown on the plots.

A few plots in the garden are raised above ground to provide easy access to all residents who are participating in the project. Beginning gardeners as well as experienced gardeners make up the many gardeners at the Community Garden project.

“For five wonderful years the Community Gardens have been giving residents a means of furthering their gardening skills with friends and neighbors,” said Mayor Bob Kellar.

Garden members will be honoring the grand milestone with a private celebration on Friday, May 20.

“We’ve come a long way from when we started. We have many accomplishments to celebrate,” said President of the Garden Council Executive Board Gisa Seeholzer-Haggin. “This garden is more than just a place to grow food, it also provides economic, health and educational benefits for the community,” she added.

Over the past five years the Community Gardens of Santa Clarita has launched and contributed to many community projects, such as the Western Bluebird Restoration Project in which they partnered with College of the Canyons and the Santa Clarita Environmental Education Consortium to hang Bluebird boxes in an effort to restore the population of Western Bluebirds. The Community Gardens also provides educational programming for all ages at little to no cost, offering vegetable gardening courses as well as age-specific programming such as the “Little Sprouts” and “Little Gardeners” programs which focus on teaching kids the basics of gardening.

For more information about the Community Gardens of Santa Clarita, please visit their website at communitygardensofsantaclarita.org.