Community Gardens

Community gardens are pieces of land that are gardened by a group of people. Community gardens improve food security by providing access to land on which to grow fresh produce. They also create green space and beautify neighborhoods, build a sense of community and connection to the environment, and provide a venue for satisfying labor and exercise. In some cases, researchers have found that urban neighborhoods with community gardens experience less crime and vandalism, probably as a result of increased neighborhood activity. Community gardens often exist in poor, inner-city neighborhoods with high proportions of apartment dwellers and other residents without space to grow their own food, but they can exist in rural areas as well. Aside from private gardens in people's yards, community gardens are perhaps the most familiar type of urban agriculture in the United States.

Community garden land can be owned either publicly or privately. In the United States, it is common for community gardening advocates to clean up abandoned vacant lots and turn them into productive gardens. In these cases, community garden land may or may not be used with owners’ permission. Alternatively, community garden land can be owned by public agencies such as parks and recreation districts, city departments, nonprofit organizations, or land trusts. Community gardens are sometimes included in public parks as health or recreational amenities. Access to land and security of land tenure remains a major challenge for community gardeners worldwide, as in most cases the gardeners themselves do not own the land directly. Especially in high-density urban areas, land for community gardens can be expensive to obtain and maintain.

The term community garden is the preferred term for collective gardening ventures in the United States and Canada. The most common types of community garden found in northern North America are areas of land divided into smaller plots that are tended by individuals or households. Individual garden plots are generally small but can range in size from as small as 5 feet by 5 feet to as large as 50 feet by 50 feet. Garden members are usually asked to follow a set of rules and rent plots by the year for a nominal fee. Waiting lists for plots can be quite long—sometimes a year or more. Many community garden [Page 81]programs also ask members to participate in garden workdays, fundraisers, and social gatherings. Some community gardens exist to provide access to gardening to those who otherwise could not have a garden, such as the elderly, recent immigrants, or the homeless. Although the primary goal of these types of gardens is to provide access to land on which to grow produce, community garden organizers typically say that “growing community” is just as important. According to the American Community Gardening Association, the primary advocacy group for community gardening in the United States and Canada, “in community gardening ‘community’ comes first.” In Europe, “allotment gardens” are closely related to this type of community garden but are usually much larger and can have dozens of large plots that have been rented by the same family for generations. Some community gardens in the United States resemble European allotment gardens in terms of their size and layout. These gardens often originated as Victory Gardens during World War II. Although not usually termed community gardens, communally held land used for vegetable production is also common in the developing world in both urban and rural areas.

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