Community Garden Movement

Community gardens are plots of urban land on which community members can grow flowers or foodstuffs for personal or collective benefit. Community gardeners share certain resources, such as space, tools, and water. Though often facilitated by social service agencies, nonprofit organizations, park and recreation departments, housing authorities, apartment complexes, block associations, or grassroots associations, community [Page 265]gardens nevertheless tend to remain under the control of the gardeners themselves. As such, they often provide disenfranchised individuals with opportunities to join a group effort, become active members of a community, take on leadership roles, and work toward collective goals. Accordingly, empowerment is a common benefit associated with community gardening and the other activities (such as fundraising, community cookouts, and fence building) associated with the establishment and operation of urban garden projects. Moreover, community gardens offer places where people can gather, network, and identify together as members of a community; they also provide spaces in which people of different social circles can integrate successfully. For these reasons, community gardens are good sites for community building and locality development.

Given that potential, it is not surprising that community garden movements, although varied, have aimed to [Page 266]effect social change from their earliest days. Beginning with the Allotment Acts of 1887 and 1890, and followed by the Local Government Act of 1894, local authorities in Great Britain provided space to urban residents for community, or allotment, gardens in an effort to address some of the public health issues associated with urban overcrowding. Many community gardens were premised on the idea that providing space in which residents could enjoy nature within their crowded urban neighborhoods would be beneficial to public health and well being. The first U.S. community gardens were established in the late 1890s in Detroit through an unemployment relief plan enacted to help those in need of social assistance and sustenance. Residents were encouraged to grow crops in “potato patches.” Similar efforts, called relief gardens, provided sustenance to those affected by the Depression in the 1930s. During the early 1970s, anti-inflation gardens combated the inflation of food prices by giving land and supplies to people so that they could grow crops themselves. Community gardening spread to countries other than the United States and Great Britain, as well. In Canada, several garden movements emerged that were similar to the ones described from the United States, albeit with other names (for example, railway gardens, 1890–1930; moral gardens, early 1900s; school gardens, 1900–1913; vacant lot gardens, 1910–1920; war gardens, 1914–1947; counter-culture gardens, 1965–1979; and community open space, 1980–the present). In short, community garden movements have been established largely in response to social crises.

Patriotism and civic pride underpin other community garden movements. In the United States, liberty gardens and victory gardens emerged as ways to rally support for the war effort during World War I and World War II, respectively. In both cases, urban residents were encouraged to farm idle land to free rural farmers to ship produce to Europe and to ease the burden of food transportation domestically. In many contemporary urban neighborhoods, creating community gardens allows residents to convert dilapidated, abandoned lots into green spaces in a show of civic pride and an effort to create positive neighborhood change, address urban decay, and reclaim neighborhood spaces. In sum, community garden movements nurture collective identity and community pride.

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