Troy Gardens is an award-winning 31-acre project which combines community gardens, a certified-organic Community Supported Agriculture farm, a restored prairie, and a thirty home mixed-income cohousing community with 30 MACLT homes. MACLT began working on Troy Gardens in 1995 along with a wonderful group of collaborating organizations and community members, and after 12 years, completed the housing component in 2007.
Alongside the Troy Gardens housing community is urban conservation land, an organic farm, and a community garden, all on MACLT land.
Troy Farm is a 5-acre, certified organic farm in operation since 2001, and the city’s first urban farm. It is surrounded by 15 acres of urban open space including woodlands, a restored tallgrass prairie, grassland savannah, wildlife corridor, and an edible woodland trail for neighbors to explore.
Troy Community Garden consists of 327 community garden plots gardened on by 190 families each year, which are available at low cost for Madison gardeners at a sliding scale based on income. Our nonprofit partner, Rooted, Inc., stewards the non-housing portion of Troy Garden land with educational programming since 2002.
For more information on the Troy Gardens development and history, see www.troygardens.net.
To learn about the community gardens, farm, and natural areas of Troy Gardens you can visit Rooted.
Th cohousing community at Troy Gardens
There are 30 cohousing units at Troy Gardens. Twenty of the units are reserved for low-moderate income buyers, and ten units are market rate with no income restrictions.
Troy Gardens is organized as a self-governing condominium. The community’s vision says:
“Troy Gardens is a welcoming and affordable cohousing community where we cultivate sustainability, trust, and meaningful connections with one another and the land through celebration, cooperation, and open communication. We are working toward a common house and common areas that facilitate this vision.”