There are a number of benefits from community gardens which fall under three main themes: urban agriculture, community development, and open spaces.
Urban agriculture: One of the crises faced by inner city residents is the food desert and lack of access to fresh healthy produce. This food insecurity problem can be addressed through community gardens in the city itself – vacant lots can be turned into garden plots and its harvest distributed to the neighborhood. The gardens can be owned by municipalities, community organizations, schools, land trusts, or even private owners. This local cultivation of one’s own food comes along with better food security, improvements in nutrition by eating fresh produce, reduced need for food transportation, and less money spent on groceries. Learning to plant and eat with the seasons can bring in a lot of educational opportunities as well. Organizations like Just Food in New York City focuses on developing a sustainable food system including partnerships with community gardens and community supported agriculture (CSA) farms.
Community development: Besides the direct impact on food security, getting a group of people together for a common cause, in this case growing greens, opens up many opportunities for community development. A sense of belonging is cultivated by the members and gardeners who tend the plot as well as a sense of neighborhood. Growing one’s own food, making decisions in what goes into the garden, and becoming self reliant is also hugely empowering, especially for new immigrants or low income people who might not feel as comfortable in formal parks. Relationships can be built across generations, cultures, ethnicities, and socioeconomic classes through working and playing together in these spaces and certainly it can contribute to reduction of crime and drug use. Some who get involved in gardening find that it helps them reconnect to their cultural or ethnic identity by the types of fruits and vegetables grown. Such empowerment and community participation very much strengthens the community as a whole.
For the especially productive gardens, they can become starting points for teaching entrepreneurship. Food from the 'Hood in South Central Los Angeles was created in October 1992 in response to the race riots and has become a nationally acclaimed program for empowering youth through entrepreneurial training. Students grew fruit and vegetables in an empty lot behind the Crenshaw High football field and developed their own line of salad dressing. Proceeds went to donation and scholarships to student managers; to date, over $250,000 in scholarships has been generated.
Open spaces: The garden itself can be a space for social, cultural, and educational activities. A study by Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny (2004) on Latino community gardens in New York found that these spaces were used as places for family gatherings, parties, holidays, workshops, school group tours, and educational courses. For residents and families that may not be able to afford visiting public parks or personal backyards, having a green communal area is an inexpensive way to gather and relax. In addition, having a green space contributes to city beautification, improvements in environmental health through ameliorating air pollution and the urban heat effect, and positive reflections of the community identity. It’s a great opportunity for residents to participate and show their culture, creativity, and aesthetics through the plants and structures.
Today, the American Community Gardening Association estimates there are over 18,000 community gardens in the US and Canada, ranging from neighborhood gardens to public housing gardens and school gardens (Kortright and Wakefield, 2011). I think that it’s a great way to reconnect with nature and the community. If you’re interested in starting your own community garden, check out the resources below or contact the People’s Garden Initiative with the US Department of Agriculture to locate your nearest community garden.
RESOURCES
REFERENCES:
Brown KH, Carter A (2003). Urban agriculture and community food security in the United States: farming from the city center to the urban fringe. Community Food Security Coalition, North American Urban Agriculture Committee.
Kortright R, Wakefield S (2011). Edible backyards: a qualitative study of household food growing and its contributions to food security. Agricultural and Human Values, 28:39-53
Saldivar-Tanaka L, Krasny ME (2004). Culturing community development, neighborhood open space, and civic agriculture: The case of Latino community gardens. Agriculture and Human Values, 21:399-412
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