In the Garden
Karen Washington, Garden of Hope, Bronx, NY
On a sunny summer Saturday, take a trip to the Watts Family Garden, a verdant two-acre parcel next to the Jordan Downs Housing Project, one of the poorest and most crime-ridden parts of Los Angeles. You will see Mexican and Central American immigrant families tending oversized plots brimming with vegetable and herb varieties brought from their native countries. Bean plants are interspersed with rows of 12 foot high corn plants in a traditional milpa arrangement. Entire 25' x 25' plots are planted with papalo and quelite (herbs for tacos, stews and soups) to be sold at profit at local swap meets. The garden buzzes with activity-it is a safe haven, a recreational space in an area largely bereft of parks.Now travel 15 miles across town to Ocean View Farms, a 25-year-old community garden located on a 7.5-acre sandy hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Here you will find a group of forty mostly white, middle-class gardeners engaged in a bi-monthly work day. They're pulling weeds, shredding green material for compost and watering fruit trees in the orchard. Afterwards, they'll sit down for a potluck and membership meeting at which they will vote on key decisions for the management of the garden.
The fact that such disparate groups of people have embraced gardening in a shared space indicates the power and universal appeal, of community gardening. According to the the American Community Gardening Association (ACGA) there are an estimated 18,000 community gardens across the USA and Canada. Community gardening is popular around the world, from rooftop gardens in St. Petersburg, Russia, to UK allotments, to farming projects in refugee camps in Africa and Asia.
Meeting Needs
Community gardening meets varying needs of diverse communities, especially those in marginalized neighborhoods struggling with hunger and poverty. Many gardens -- particularly those in underserved areas -- begin to address lack of access to fresh produce, making the gardens a critical piece of the community's food security. One study estimates that gardening can add $500 to $1200 worth of produce per year to a family's diet -- a critical difference for low-income families. Community gardening can be a unique and valuable way for immigrants who move from a rural home to a new city to maintain their own culture. A community garden allows people to grow crops they may not be able to find elsewhere -- for immigrants, this can mean being able to maintain a traditional diet and be healthier and happier. In dense urban areas, gardens can become parks and meeting places. They create links across generational and ethnic lines through the universal languages of gardens and food.
While backyard and kitchen gardeners generally garden individually on private land, community gardeners use land shared among several households. Community gardeners generally grow produce to eat at home or to share. Some community gardens, often in urban areas, move into growing for commercial use -- one view of the difference between a community garden and urban agriculture defines the latter as gardens or farms planted for the purpose of selling the produce. Commercial urban farms can expand production on their generally small land area with aquaculture, hydroponics, and greenhouses -- and may partner with a commercial kitchen to create locally-produced value-added products such as jams and sauces.
Special Populations
Community gardening also can be a powerful tool for meeting the particular needs of special populations, not only in providing fresh food, but also as a source of jobs and livelihoods, and as an effective therapeutic force.
- Youth entrepreneurial gardens can provide employment opportunities, and education for at-risk teens. (The Food Project)
- Community gardens provide refugees, immigrants, and marginalized populations with food, livelihoods and places of safety. (Thrive program in UK)
- Horticultural therapy gardens provide healing for physical, emotional and mental illness. (American Horticultural Therapy Association)
- Prison gardens give inmates a measure of hope and pride, along with job skills and marketing know-how. (The Garden Project)
- School gardens give children access to fresh, nutritious food (The Edible Schoolyard), as well as linking them to numerous educational studies and environmental pursuits.
Vegetables for Victory
Increasing food production and food security through community gardening is not a new idea. In the middle of a depression in 1890s Detroit, the mayor asked owners of vacant lots to donate their land temporarily to unemployed city residents for the purpose of supplementing their families' food supply. The gardens, called "potato patches" after their primary crop, produced 14,000 bushels of vegetables in the first year, with 2,000 families involved over the next 20 years of the gardens' popularity. The US Government promoted the planting of "Victory Gardens" during World War II expressly as a way to increase food security, health, and -- in modern terms -- homeland security in wartime. Through a campaign including slogans such as "Vegetables for Vitality, for Victory!" Victory Gardens became so popular that in 1944, 20 million victory gardeners produced 44% of the fresh vegetables in the United States. In the 1970s, there was a popular resurgence of interest in "growing your own" among many young people and antiwar activists.
Community in Gardens
Like many of these historic examples, today's community gardens literally grew out of community efforts -- often mobilizing the community around issues of poverty and justice in the process. 
As gardening turns consumers into producers, community gardening can turn residents into more engaged and skilled members of the community. Many gardening communities develop an education component, through one-on-one skills building and exchange or more formally through youth groups or classes. This kind of involvement in a garden gives people a commitment to their neighborhood, community, and their food system. Struggles to save gardens in New York City in the early 1990s turned into larger discussions about the city's neglect of low income communities. Many gardens that were begun to provide food for neighborhood residents have expanded to have an impact on the wider community by donating to local food banks. In 2006, youth farmers in an underserved urban neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, are going beyond their farming and marketing activities and conducting a community food assessment to gain broader understanding of their community's food system.
Borrowed Land
Despite all the benefits, community gardens face many challenges. Many garden groups do not own the land they tend. City governments -- and the real estate market -- generally do not value garden space and some communities have to engage in near-constant struggle to stay on their land. (Though a 2006 New York City study showed a significant increase in property values near community gardens.) Unlike many other public services such as housing or public health, gardening does not have an established funding stream. Additionally, soil pollution from heavy metals can be a serious health risk to urban gardeners, and it can be expensive to clean a garden lot of contaminants.
A Growing Movement
Nonetheless, the United States is on the verge of a renaissance of community gardening and urban farming, with some careful cultivation. Local governments need to take the lead in recognizing the potential of gardening to help address many of the physical, social, and economic ills affecting their neighborhoods. But local governments won't be able to do it all. Private foundations must increase funding for gardens, and federal programs will need to be expanded and reoriented in support of gardening. But most importantly, of course, is the ongoing commitment of millions of gardeners, ablaze with the desire to gain the power and dignity of growing their own food.
Updated 1/2010
