Social Benefits of a Community Garden
Gardens have long been used by Americans as a way to save money and increase access to nutritious food by growing it right in their backyard. However, those living in apartments and without yards to cultivate don’t have this same opportunity and therefore miss out on the many advantages provided by keeping a garden.
Recently, there has been a surge in community garden programs around the country, making gardening available to those who wouldn’t normally have the chance. When these community gardens are installed in urban and suburban environments, they improve the physical, social, and economic health of the people living there.
Participating in your community’s garden gives you control over your time spent planting and maintaining your part of the land, so you can truly enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of your labor.
What is a Community Garden?
By general definition, a community garden is a plot that is collectively cultivated by local households. However, community gardens can be manifested in a number of ways. In some cases, each participating household gets their own plot to care for within the garden. In other instances, the garden is one large plot worked by volunteers from the community. The only real connecting characteristic is that farming the land is a shared endeavor by members of the community. Regardless of the approach, the benefits of community gardens can be transformative for those who take part.
Saving Money at the Market
Food is a significant portion of even the most modest of budgets, and any money saved at the market can ease the pressure of increasing consumer prices. For those struggling on a tight budget, community gardens can help provide long-term food security.
Programs that use community assets to construct and fund the garden are ideal because this approach removes any financial burdens for participation. When the land, tools, fertilizer, and plants are provided, anyone with an interest can be rewarded with the garden’s many physical and emotional benefits.
Programs that essentially lease a section of a larger garden to citizens to personally cultivate demand more out-of-pocket costs for participants who then need to purchase their own supplies, on top of the fee for the land. These costs cut into the potential savings from growing your own food, but they can be offset in a number of ways: if the city provides tools, by seed and plant sharing within the community, and similar cost saving measures. In our town, manure for the community garden is provided free from the local zoo.
Making Better Nutrition More Accessible
Poor diets are linked to myriad of short and long term medical conditions. Increasing the intake of fruits and vegetables, along with the added physical activity from maintaining the garden, can reduce the risk of obesity and its related diseases, as well as ensure the body receives the nutrients it needs. Community gardens increase the availability of nutritious food and lessen the impact of food deserts. This especially helps to reduce food insecurity in lower income families struggling to get by.
Protecting the Environment
Community gardens minimize the impact on the environment from the shipment of food from large corporate farms to urban and suburban markets. The more locally our food is produced, the less it contributes to ecological damage.
Community farms can also result in less neighborhood waste by promoting composting. In some cases, these gardens replace “hard” structures like empty urban lots. This reduces water runoff and improves local water quality. There is also an improvement in a neighborhood’s biodiversity as these farms offer an oasis of green within developed areas.
Stocking Community Pantries
Community gardens don’t just feed the families of those who participate. Excess food grown in the garden can be moved to food banks and community pantries, homeless support organizations, and similar social groups to help ensure that nutritious foods are available to everyone.
Strengthening Community Ties
Working in the garden together also provides opportunities for positive social interaction between members of the community. Often in our busy society, our neighbors are strangers to us. Involvement in a community garden opens us up to meeting and working alongside neighbors we may not have had a chance to meet.
These gardens have been shown to improve surrounding property values by eliminating vacant lots. Crime and illegal dumping, common in empty buildings and lots, are reduced in neighborhoods that replace empty lots with farms, creating a safer and more connected community.
Community gardens also provide participants greater economic opportunities through skills training or by selling produce at farmer’s markets. Participants can learn skills in planning, food production, and business and apply them to their careers or pursuits for greater personal growth.
Sources:
https://environmentalevidencejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2047-2382-3-20
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1092961.pdf
https://www.cdc.gov/healthyplaces/healthtopics/healthyfood/community.htm