During wartime, families often turned to “victory gardens” to make up for the scarcity and expense of fresh food. Given the current economic troubles, there has been a renewed interest in growing-your-own .

Concerns about the use of pesticides and other food safety issues, and the debate over whether nutrition has been bred out of vegetables in favor of creating produce with longer shelf life, also are contributing to the blossoming of community gardens across the country.

Locally, United Community Family Services has joined the movement by hosting a community garden on its General Administration Building property at 34 East Town St. in Norwich.

This new, currently-forming community garden is funded through the regional Thames Valley Council for Community Action, with an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus grant. It will be designed to accommodate 10 families.

Starting a garden – whether in one’s own backyard or a more ambitious project such as a community garden with several plots – can be an intimidating project.

Locating a site, making sure the soil is safe for gardening, finding a water supply , complying with local regulations, establishing rules for the members of a community garden – all of this can be daunting, and each project is going to have its own unique set of challenges.

To help communities deal with the nuts and bolts of getting their own garden started, a network of experts has come together called the Community Harvest Network of New London, or CHN.

CHN’s goal is to help create community gardens at no less than 90 sites in New London County over the next five years, according to CHN Program Coordinator Dave Fairman. The UCFS garden is one of them.

If organized and run well, community gardens can make a significant contribution to a family’s diet and lower grocery bills, Fairman said.

“A single mother can produce $500 of free vegetables, and at the same time, build a stronger bond with her children,” Fairman said.

Well-run community gardens also provide an opportunity to bring in some extra cash by selling some of the produce, he added, and pointed to a group called F. R.E.S.H. (short for “Food: Resources, Education , Security, Health” ) as a successful model.

In fact, F.R.E.S.H. is one of the founding partners of the Community Harvest Network, which also includes the Ledge Light Health District and the New London Group.

Together, they and other volunteers (such as members of the state Master Gardener program) help community gardeners from the outset with site evaluation and preparation, tools and training, construction, composting and use of offsite greenhouses for growing produce year-round .

CHN also offers best-practices in terms of community education, outreach, marketing and record-keeping .

The group is very excited about working with UCFS, Fairman said. “There’s a field behind their offices and it’s a good site. The plots will be about 10-by-10 feet and there will be room to expand,” he said.

The Ledge Light Health District also will help teach the community garden participants about safely canning and freezing their crops, so that they have access to the food year-round .

The project is “a great marriage” between UCFS and TVCCA, said TVCCA Chief of Operations Mary Lou Underwood .

“Our intent is to help in the community , first and foremost with the creation of jobs… but there was an [ARRA grant] category for community gardens and we saw this as a way of showing people how to be more self-sufficient … It’s one thing to say, “Here’s a bag of groceries,’ and another to show them how to grow their own food,” Underwood said.

“Not everyone is going to want to do this, but when someone comes to us with concerns about their grocery dollars, we can say, ‘Here’s something else you can try,’” she said.

“But it’s more than just planting a garden . They also will learn about nutrition and how to preserve food. So, it’s looking at things more holistically,” Underwood said.

“And some people have never had this kind of experience, so they will find out that you don’t have to live in the country where there’s a lot of land – you can have a garden in the city,” she said.

A community garden is a perfect fit for an organization like UCFS, said Director of Marketing and Development Pam Kinder. “We are about health and wellbeing , and good food, obviously, is at the core of that,” she said. “And the people we serve are the people who can make use of a community garden.”

Echoing Underwood’s observation, Kinder noted that gardens have a way of creating connections between people. “The families can bond and assist each other, so it’s more than a garden,” she said.

For information about getting a plot in the UCFS community garden, call David Fairman at 860-857-1269 or e-mail CommunityHarvestNetwork@gmail .com.