Community gardens – where residents come together to grow food, flowers, trees, and shrubs — can improve nutrition and public health, enhance urban environmental quality, and provide opportunities for urban residents to experience the natural world (1-4). This page contains research and educational materials designed to help community gardeners overcome challenges and tap opportunities in the areas of community organizing, sustainable horticultural production, education, and health promotion in community gardens.
Research on Community Gardens
Mixed crops and flowers in a Brooklyn garden. Photo: M. Gregory.
A better understanding of urban community gardens can guide garden leaders, educators, researchers, planners, and policymakers to provide support that will help community gardens flourish. Therefore, an important part of my dissertation research with gardeners in NYC involved documenting their gardening practices, challenges, and knowledge systems (how gardeners obtain and share information, and make decisions about their practices). What we learned is outlined in the paper linked below:
- Gregory, M.M., T.W. Leslie, and L.E. Drinkwater. 2015. Agroecological and social characteristics of New York City community gardens: Contributions to urban food security, ecosystem services, and environmental education. Urban Ecosystems. The final publication is available at Springer via http://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-015-0505-1.
This paper outlines key agro-ecological characteristics of urban community gardens in NYC, including land use patterns, crop diversity, soil properties, and pest and beneficial arthropod populations. It also highlights unique challenges for sustainable food production in these gardens, and promising gardening practices and horticultural education programs for addressing these challenges.
Community Garden Programming
A student in the Youth Urban Gardening Internship gives a tour of the Carver High School garden, Fall 2019.
As coordinator of the Forsyth Community Gardening program at N.C. Cooperative Extension (2015-2019), I had the privilege of working with neighborhoods, schools, faith communities, and community organizations to create and sustain community gardens. Our programming and technical assistance covered garden start-up, garden organizing and management, sustainable horticulture, diversity and inclusion, and garden-based curricula for children and youth. Here are highlights from the years I served in this role:
- Forsyth Community Garden Year in Review, 2019
- Forsyth Community Garden Year in Review, 2018
- Forsyth Community Garden Year in Review, 2017
- Forsyth Community Garden Year in Review, 2016
Garden Start-Up and Organizing Resources
Soil sampling with children at a community garden
Guide to Starting a Garden in Forsyth County (NC): Step-by-step guidance on forming a leadership team, selecting a good site, organizing the garden, and designing, preparing, and planting your site. This guide is tailored for Forsyth County, NC, but most of the content is applicable to community gardens anywhere.
[same as above, in Spanish]: Guía para Comenzar un Huerto Comunitario en el Condado de Forsyth (NC).
Community Gardening 101 Webinar: Learn the steps to starting and sustaining a community garden in this webinar! We’ll cover: forming a leadership team, organizing the garden, selecting a good site, designing and planting the garden, and maintaining and using the garden with sustainable horticultural practices and activities that bring people together. When you finish viewing the webinar, please complete this brief evaluation.
The Garden Steward Instructions may be used by garden groups that establish a rotation of people to maintain and harvest the garden. The template contains suggested instructions for day-to-day maintenance and forms for seasonal instructions, a crop map, harvest log, and journal to record tasks completed, pests found, and other notes. It is accompanied by a packet of Resources for Routine Maintenance for reference by garden stewards.
Sustainable Horticulture in Community Gardens
For more information on specific horticultural practices (e.g., cover cropping, ecologically-based pest management) and how they can contribute to more productive and sustainable community gardens, please use the links on the Sustainable Horticulture page.
Zucchini flourishing in a Brooklyn garden (guarded by a diligent scarecrow). Photo: M. Gregory.
References:
Trellised bitter melon growing at a youth-managed urban farm. Photo: M. Gregory.
(1) Alaimo, K., E. Packnett, R. A. Miles, and D. J. Kruger. 2008. Fruit and Vegetable Intake among Urban Community Gardeners. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 40:94–101.
(2) Blair, D., C. C. Giesecke, and S. Sherman. 1991. A Dietary, Social and Economic-Evaluation of the Philadelphia Urban Gardening Project. Journal of Nutrition Education 23:161–167.
(3) Krasny M.E. and K.G. Tidball. 2009. Community gardens as contexts for science, stewardship, and civic action learning. Cities and the Environment 2: Article 8, 18 pp. http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cate/vol2/iss1/8/.
(4) Miller, J.R. 2005. Biodiversity conservation and the extinction of experience. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 20:430-434.
Please note: The content and opinions expressed on this website are mine personally, and do not reflect the views of any institutions with which I am or have been affiliated (e.g., colleges and universities, governmental and non-governmental organizations). Thanks for understanding!
Megan M. Gregory: E-Portfolio 