A Handbook of Community Gardening
by Boston Urban Gardeners
edited by Susan Naimark, 1982 (180 pgs.)
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York
A timeless, beautifully written, comprehensive how-to guide for community gardening, covering a wide range of topics. Check your used bookstore for a copy. 

City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America
Laura Lawson, 2005 (350 pgs.)
Available for purchase through University of California Press
“…Combining solid scholarship with engaging images of the gardens and stories of their makers, this book sheds new light on the value of urban open space. More important, it explains why community gardens need to stand alongside city parks as permanent open spaces. Essential reading for community developers and landscape architects as well as anyone who ventures outside, enthusiasm and shovel in hand, to improve their local environment.” --Mark Francis, author of Urban Open Space and Village Homes

Patchwork: stories of gardens and community
Beret Halverson and Jim Flint, Friends of Burlington Gardens, 2005
The beautiful book shares the first-person stories of ten community gardeners representing a diversity of cultural perspectives. The detailed accounts gathered by Beret Halverson are accompanied by black and white photographs taken by Jim Flint. Editor’s journal entries and practical tips provide a "how to" guide for starting and sustaining a community, neighborhood, or youth garden.  Order from Friends of Burlington Gardens.

Please let us your community garden reading recommendations – we’ll post them here!