The Importance of Creating Community Gardens

Gardening can help bring people together from all walks of life. It is really rewarding to see a seed germinate into something great and healthy. When people get together to plant things, they are nicer to each other and can resolve their differences. Creating community gardens is a great way to strengthen the community you are in because they help education, get people talking, and help the environment. Community gardens can help build up education by giving kids a safe place to work in and learn about all sorts of different things. Gardens create a bridge between the school and the surrounding community by offering gardening space to students, parents, teachers and neighbors.

Each of these individuals brings important resources to the garden, and ultimately a mutually beneficial relationship can form between the school and the surrounding neighborhood. Teachers have an outdoor classroom where students are given the opportunity to experience hands-on lessons in: biology and ecology, horticulture, wellness and nutrition, recycling, composting, and community building. Plus kids can get outside and not be playing video games, and will have the chance to see animals and plants. Gardens also get people talking. For example when we participated in our local garden, we had a chance to talk with our neighbors who were immigrants from Thailand. They did not speak English very well but we were able to start little conversations just by being with our vegetables every day. By creating these spaces, people can get together and learn each other’s customs and feel like they are belonging to the country they moved to.

Next community gardens help the environment. They help support local pollinators. Bees are responsible for one out of three bites of food we eat — therefore we need to safeguard our food supply by increasing the population of solitary bees, such as mason bees. These gentle bees work side-by-side with honey bees to pollinate home gardens as well as major food crops such as cherries and almonds. Super pollinators, solitary bees don’t make honey, and instead spend all their energy pollinating fruits, vegetables, nuts and flowers. Together with Crown Bees, we would like to encourage you to consider being to be a part of the solution and not only help increase public awareness about native bees, but also to erect bee houses in ACGA gardens.

In conclusion community gardens are a fantastic opportunity to get people together instead of apart, allow kids to learn more about the world around them and to also get people learning about the environment and what a huge impact our actions have on it. If we are able to make more city spaces into green spaces, we can transform an otherwise dead space into something very amazing, both for individuals and the greater community as a whole.

Works Cited

1. American Community Gardening Association. (n.d.). About Us. Retrieved from https://communitygarden.org/about-us/
2. Brinkley, C. (2015). Gardening Together: Learning from Community Gardens in the Global North and South. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 5(2), 13-22.
3. Burtinshaw, J. (2016). The School Garden as a Site of Learning: Reconsidering the Role of the Garden in Education. Curriculum Inquiry, 46(2), 132-148.
4. Cohen, N., & Reynolds, K. (2019). Engaging Communities in School Gardens: A Compendium of Best Practices. Journal of School Health, 89(1), 32-40.
5. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2011). School gardens: A resource for communities, the environment and schools. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/3/i2143e/i2143e00.htm
6. Krasny, M. E., & Tidball, K. G. (2009). Community Gardens as Contexts for Science, Stewardship, and Civic Action Learning. Cities and the Environment, 2(1), 8.
7. Liao, L., & Lin, C. (2018). Community Gardens: Space for Cross-Cultural Encounters and Exchanges. Sustainability, 10(12), 4757. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124757
8. McKenna, E., & Smith, S. (2019). Building Environmental Citizenship through Community Garden Learning. Journal of Environmental Education, 50(4), 276-286.
9. Morrow, J., Mbabazi, R., & Peacock, C. (2019). The Community Garden as a Site for Promoting Healthy Food Access in Non-Urban Food Deserts. Health & Place, 55, 29-36.
10. Orwat, C., & McCormack, L. A. (2018). Community Gardens: Opportunities for Obesity Prevention Intervention in Underserved Populations. Journal of Community Health, 43(6), 1063-1070.