Can someone here point me in the right direction to learn

[JanMichael]

about community gardens? Specifically, how to start them, benefits...can the food be donated to shelters to feed people who are unlikely to work or have a plot?

[Blue Gardener]

1. Your local extension service might have some info

I would try there first.

[HamdenRice]

2. It also depends a lot on your city or town. Here in NYC there are different kinds

We had a terrible housing crisis in the 70s in New York -- kind of like what's going on with foreclosure nationwide, but much, much worse. You may have heard of or seen pictures of the "south Bronx" and all the burned out and abandoned buildings. Contrary to what most people think, this was not a slow process of urban decay. It happened very suddenly because of a really bad combination of redlining, excessive rent control, unemployment and arson. The result was that throughout the Bronx, Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, there were thousands of vacant lots interspersed among brownstones and townhouses.

People in the neighborhoods simply took over the abandoned lots without any help or authorization from the city which then owned the lots. In order to reduce the ugliness of the empty lots and their use as gathering places for drug addicts, prostitutes and criminals, people slowly cleared them of bricks, garbage and debris and brought in top soil and just started planting.

The most famous was created by a hippy couple, Adam Purple and his wife (I forget her name). Adam always dressed in purple tie dye, and rode his bicycle all over the city gathering horse manure from Central Park, from mounted cops and from the horse carriages, and bucket by bucket created a world famous community garden. You can read about it here (the writer is a bit over the top, but it's an informative article anyway):

http://mediafilter.org/shadow/s43/s43adampurp.html

Other people did similar things on a smaller scale all over the city. But none of these community gardens had ownership of the land, and when real estate took off again, the city basically demolished all the gardens and built fancy condos (many of which are now in foreclosure).

A more stable kind of community garden is run by the botanical gardens -- centers for learning about plants. We have two in NYC -- the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and the Bronx Botanical Gardens. They organize community gardens in large open areas. The Brooklyn Community Garden got control of an abandoned airfield called Floyd Bennet Field, and alots plots to community members who apply.

So you can contact your local Botanical Gardens. Even if they don't do this themselves, they might know who does, or might be interested in a community entrepreneur like yourself organizing it under their auspices.

[hippywife]

3. Google for community gardens

with your specific city as part of the search criteria. You should find something that way.