Community Garden
Hidden Alley Ranch is a Seed St. Louis community garden on a 0.4 acre lot behind residential buildings on Lawrence, Magnolia, and Botanical streets. The garden is only accessible through alleyways.
The herb garden is open to the community so take what you need from there, but please refrain from harvesting anything else unless you helped to grow it.
We welcome anyone with interest (even if you do not have a plot) to join our “committees” which organize work on (and harvest from) shared spaces.
Cooperative Housing
The founders of HAR started meeting with a group of people interested in intentional community in 2013. HAR began with the purchase of the community garden land and the duplex in April 2017. The housing co-op took it’s first strides in 2019 and currently owns two buildings with 3 (going on 4) independent housing units with some shared amenities. It is designed to become group-owned over time, with all members building equity, while allowing for a diversity of household incomes. The housing co-op will become ever more affordable, as share resale rates are pegged to the median income rather than the housing market.
The Chicken Coop Co-op
The Coop Co-op is a group of households who share responsibility for taking care of the flock of chickens who live at Hidden Alley Ranch. The co-op is organized with 7 shares (which can be split or otherwise shared), so that each share has one day a week where they have the rights to the eggs and responsibility for the upkeep.
The Chicken Coop co-op runs separately from the garden plots, but many of its members also have plots. Anyone is welcome to feed the chickens appropriate table scraps to reduce waste and to interact with the chickens safely (kids supervised please!). Reach out if you want more information about the chickens!
Tool Share
The Tool Sharing project has been merged with the Shaw Tool Library project.
St. Louis Ecovillage Network
This is a network of people interested in intentional communities, eco-villages, and cooperative living in the St. Louis area (you can think of it as umbrella organization of which Hidden Alley Ranch is a part). Connect with them on Facebook or Meetup.
