How do I make a proper garden?

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@knitsybitsy wrote:

I wanted to make a big garden with lots of plants arranged nicely. When I mean, big, I mean a lot size. Like a whole community lot with plants on it, so I can have sims caring for it, but it doesn't belong to any one sim. They all can care for it and if someone needs food for the fridge I send the up there to care for it and get some.  When I arrange it my own way, "tend garden" doesn't work. If I just plant a lot of plants all in one long row, it sometimes works. 
I can still tend plants individually, and that is ok, just slower. Is this just normal? 

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I made a community park with a greenhouse (you can download from my gallery if you like) and did some experimenting with it. This is what I found so far:

•  When I began to check on it with my Sims in the adjacent lot there was a lady sleeping with green fumes on th bench... so I had to add rest rooms and a shower, just because. So far it seems that people use and maintain the bathrooms fine. 
• A bunch of people enjoy and use the park (yay!).
• Community members do go into the greenhouse and show interest in the plants, but I have not witnessed any of them harvesting yet, but...
• The plants seem to develop more slowly than when you live on the lot. I did go over every day or two with the family to tend the garden, and it seems to develop very slowly, but they were able to harvest a few things so far, so I am not positive about others yet.
• If you make it residential to live on for a while until the plants are mature I'm not sure if they would help enough? I don't think that community members will interact with the plants if it is residential, though, and they would not come to the park, but it would be a good experiment to see if you could get the plants full of fruits and veggies then make it community again and see what happens.