[Belfast]

There is an article on it being done in the UK.

I believe it is also popular in America.

Meet the urban sharecroppers
Want to grow your own organic fruit and veg but don't have the time? Why not find a neighbour who longs to garden but doesn't have the space? Tanis Taylor reports on the rise of garden-sharing scheme
* Tanis Taylor
* The Guardian, Thursday 4 September 2008


It was a small notice, in between the ads for childminding and English lessons. "Free gardening. I will cultivate an abundant vegetable plot for you in your garden and we will share the produce 50/50." Then a number.

When I got home I looked at my garden - unused, unloved, under wood chip. I looked at Google Earth. Almost half of the 3.1m households in London have a garden. Put together, they would occupy an area roughly the size of the Isle of Wight, and could insulate us against food price hikes and keep us all in fresh vegetables. Most are lawns or crazy paving.

The idea of garden-sharing began in cities, among people who wanted to grow fruit and vegetables to eat but didn't have the time, space or confidence. The most obvious solution was to pool resources; for knowledgeable people with time on their hands, but little space, to help the time-poor; and for those - often elderly - with large, unmanageable gardens to get labour in exchange for yield.

It started informally with flat dwellers annexing the odd flower bed and gradually it grew. Communal gardens cropped up, gardening groups emerged. Fritz Haeg created an edible estate in the front gardens of a Southwark tower block. Projects such as the Tavistock Garden Share Alliance and pilot schemes such as LandFit and Swapaplot paired up unused gardens with the green-fingered. Suddenly there was a blush of Yahoo message groups, adverts in the local library, communal street sheds and action days. People began to share support and tips at first, then labour, compost, watering duties and harvests. Sales of vegetable seeds overtook those of flowers for the first time since the second world war.

The GroFun (Growing Real Organic Food in Urban Neighbourhoods) project in Bristol encourages members............

The rest of the Article can be found on the guardians web site

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/04/ethicalliving.organics