Guelph Community Gardens

A reference layer of the community gardens on the City of Guelph's roster — 43 food-growing gardens and 27 pollinator patches, with the City's outline wherever it has drawn one — ready to add to the OpenStreetMap editors iD and JOSM while you map.

City roster: 2026-10-09 · City footprints: 2026-10-09 · tiles rebuilt: 2026-10-09

Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – City of Guelph. Sources: Community Gardens and Community Gardens Polygons.

Preview

The raster layer drawn over OpenStreetMap. Green outlines are the City's garden footprints; a green dot marks a food garden too small to see at this zoom or with no footprint at all; amber dots are pollinator patches.

Coverage vs OpenStreetMap: see which City gardens are missing from OSM, untagged, unnamed or named differently — a mapper's worklist with an interactive map and table.

Two layers — which to use

Vector layer	Interactive. Click a garden to read its tags (`name`, `city_name`, `type`, `kind`, `address`, `footprint`, `garden_id`). Best in iD.
Raster layer	Outlines, dots and names drawn directly on the tiles. A readable backdrop. Best in JOSM.

Treat the outline as a hint, not a trace. Many of the City's footprints are a single bed — the median is about 230 m² — and the footprint layer has not been redrawn since mid-2025. Map what is on the ground or in current imagery, usually leisure=garden + garden:type=community around the whole plot area.

Add to iD

Vector layer (interactive)

Open the iD editor and press U for the Map Data panel.
Under Custom Map Data, open the settings and paste this URL:

https://guelph-maps.github.io/guelph-gardens-layer/tiles/vector/{z}/{x}/{y}.pbf

Zoom in, then click any garden to see its tags in the inspector.

Raster layer (visible names)

Open the Background panel and choose Custom.
Paste this URL template:

https://guelph-maps.github.io/guelph-gardens-layer/tiles/raster/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

Add to JOSM

Raster layer (recommended for JOSM)

Open Preferences → Imagery and click +TMS.
Paste this entry (the tms[13,17] prefix sets the zoom range; JOSM scales it up past z17):

tms[13,17]:https://guelph-maps.github.io/guelph-gardens-layer/tiles/raster/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png

Give it a name such as Guelph Community Gardens, click OK, then enable it from the Imagery menu. Note JOSM's placeholder is {zoom}, not {z}.

Vector layer (optional)

JOSM can also add the vector tiles via Preferences → Imagery → +MVT:

https://guelph-maps.github.io/guelph-gardens-layer/tiles/vector/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.pbf

Notes

The City's point layer is the roster: it decides which gardens exist and what they are called. It is kept current (two gardens added in June 2026). The polygon layer only lends a garden its outline, joined on the City's garden id; the three newest gardens have none and are drawn as a dot.
Gardens the City marks as future are left out.
Names are the City's ALL CAPS roster names, title-cased for the map (city_name keeps them verbatim). Check the sign before copying one.
Pollinator patches are drawn but kept apart: OSM has no settled tag for a pollinator garden, and the gap page does not count them.
Vector tiles are pre-rendered for zooms 12–19; raster tiles for z13–17 (the editor overzooms them further).
Tiles are refreshed weekly from the City's service.
This is a reference layer — verify against survey or imagery before copying anything into OpenStreetMap.