Community gardens in the United States benefit both gardeners and society at large. Community gardens provide fresh produce to gardeners and their friends and neighbors. They provide a place of connection to nature and to other people. In a wider sense, community gardens provide green space, a habitat for insects and animals, sites for gardening education, and beautification of the local area. Community gardens provide access to land to those who otherwise could not have a garden, such as apartment-dwellers, the elderly, and the homeless. Many gardens resemble European allotment gardens, with plots or boxes where individuals and families can grow vegetables and flowers, including a number which began as victory gardens during World War II. Other gardens are worked as community farms with no individual plots at all, similar to urban farms.
Overview.
A community garden is any piece of land gardened by a group of people. The majority of gardens in community gardening programs are collections of individual garden plots, frequently between and . This holds true whether they are sponsored by public agencies, city departments, large non-profits, or (most commonly) a coalition of different entities and groups. Some gardens have common-area features, such as orchards, beehives, and plots that are tended by children or volunteers for the community.
Whether the garden is run as a co-op by the gardeners themselves (common in New York City, Boston and other East Coast cities), or managed by a public or non-profit agency, plot holders are typically asked to pay a fee each year and to abide by a set of rules. Fees typically cover water costs, insurance, and infrastructure repairs.
Many gardens have communal activities such as meetings, workdays, fundraisers, and social gatherings. Community garden organizers typically say that "growing community" is as important as growing vegetables; or, as the American Community Gardening Association (ACGA) puts it: "In community gardening, 'community' comes first."
Community gardening in the United States overlaps, to some extent, with the related but distinct movement to encourage local food production, local farmers' markets, and community supported agriculture farms (CSAs). Leases and rules prevent most, though not all, community gardeners from selling their produce commercially, as many community gardens are viewed (and are often set up as) nonprofit organizations. However, such gardens may donate fresh fruits and vegetables to local food pantries, cooperatives, and homeless members of their community.
Depending on their size, community gardens host local farmers markets where the farmers provide space-intensive crops such as corn or potatoes. In turn, small farmers can reach a wider audience and consumer base by drawing on community gardeners and their contacts. Although the two approaches are distinct, both can be effective ways to produce local food in urban areas, safeguard green space, and contribute to food security. Community gardens also increase environmental aesthetics, promote neighborhood attachment, and social involvement.
Similar to the practice of reclaiming bombed areas for community gardens (practiced during WWII in the ghettos of Eastern Europe), community groups have reclaimed abandoned or vacant lots for garden plots in American inner-cities. In these cases, groups have subsequently leased from a municipality that claims the property, or claimed squatter's rights or a right to subsistence not currently recognized by the legal system.
Community gardens often face pressure due to economic development, rising land values, and decreased city government budgets. In some cases, they have responded to the changes by forming nonprofit organizations to provide assistance and by building gardens on city park spaces and school yards. Another source of pressure in some locations is the cost of water, one of the gardens' main expenses.
History.
The history of community gardening in the US dates back to the early 18th century, when Moravians created a community garden in the community of Bethabara, near modern Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This garden is still active and open for visitors today. Community gardening was also a practice of Native American tribes and First Nations peoples, who likely gardened with a community approach for generations before the arrival of immigrants. Exemplifying this, Gilbert L. Wilson's book "Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden" paints a picture of gardens among the Hidatsa.
In the 1890s, Detroit became the first city to use vacant lots for a municipally sponsored urban gardening programs. Known as “Pingree’s Potato Patches” after Mayor Hazen Pingree, the program was formed as a response to the 1893 economic recession which left the city's industrial laborers unemployed. Observing the success of Detroit's gardening program, Boston and San Francisco later adopted similar programs. The latter cities' programs, however, were temporary programs aimed at helping the poor.
As adult interest in gardens began to wane, there was a renewed interest in children's gardening with the advocacy of Fannie Griscom Parsons in New York City. In DeWitt Clinton Park, Parsons created a large educational garden in the early 1900s as a way to "show how willing and anxious children are to work, and to teach them in their work some necessary civic virtues; private care of public property, economy, honesty, application concentration, self-government, civic pride, justice, the dignity of labor, and the love of nature by opening to their minds the little we know of her mysteries, more wonderful than any fairy tale.”
During World War I and World War II, Victory gardens were planted on public land to meet some of the domestic need for food. The term "community garden" came into use to describe collectively grown gardens and gardens with individual plots during World War I.
In the 1960s and 70s, community gardens were a result of grassroots organizations that promoted environmental stewardship and revitalized urban neighborhoods. In 1978, the American Community Gardening Association (ACGA) was formed to share information and resources among community gardeners and to form a nationwide network of said gardeners.
From the mid-1970s through the early 1990s, community gardening, in a select number of major American cities, enjoyed federal financial support, though many programs struggled to find funding. The loss of the federal program increased the challenge of finding funding to support gardens, as the dues rarely cover all the garden's expenses.
In social movements.
Community gardens are seen as valuable in food systems movements such as food justice, food sovereignty, food security, and agroecology. Community urban farms also provide a medium for gender empowerment, racial inclusion, and alternative power structures. Food system movements are happening beyond the United States, transnationally in the Global North and the Global South in regions of Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The globalization of food production in the previous century has also globalized and connected community organizations and international NGOs working on food systems and food sovereignty.
Benefits of gardening.
Cultural.
Community gardens create a common space for people from diverse cultures, nationalities, and gender identities to come together and create strong community. Gardeners learn about new plants from each other, share seeds and plants, and expand their knowledge of each other's cultures and cuisines. This knowledge and cultural exchange increases community connectedness and the cultural specificity of foods grown.
Economic.
As the majority of the United States' farmers reach retirement age, community gardens play an active role in informing, and perhaps inspiring, a new generation to become involved with and passionate about growing food. Diversifying the food system with community gardens and other methods of urban agriculture will benefit the economy and create competition between product quality and value.
Green spaces in cities often increase the land value of an area and contribute to gentrification. Gentrification, in turn, can lead to increased density and pressure on the land owner of the garden to develop it.
Being a member of a community garden requires time, energy, and some money for dues, seeds, plants, and fertilizers. Some community members may work multiple jobs or have family responsibilities, and have little to no extra time to commit. However, many gardens have sliding scales for dues, or have funding that subsidizes low-income gardeners.
Environmental.
Food composting positively impacts the environment. A case study conducted in 2019 by the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign and the University of Illinois at Chicago determined the impact from decentralized food composting in the City of Chicago.  In 2015, the City of Chicago implemented an ordinance allowing acceptance and processing of food scraps at community gardens and urban farms. Approximately 16% of the food waste was processed at 86 registered compost facilities in 2019.  The study estimates capacity for food composting could reach 27% of the city's residential food waste, resulting in an estimated savings of over $4 million per year.  In addition to the financial cost savings, other benefits include reduced greenhouse gases because of reduced refuse pickup, compost as energy filled fertilizer for community gardens and urban farms, and waste reduction into landfills. However, food composting is not suitable for all community gardens because it requires a certain amount of inputs, a designated composting area, and regular maintenance, in return for a relatively small yield.
Community gardens have the potential to positively impact the areas around them. If gardeners employ organic and environmentally conscious techniques, community gardens can be a step away from chemically dependent and wasteful food systems. Gardens that produce crops and vegetables act to reduce the need for fossil-fuel intensive storage and delivery of food to local community members. As researcher Montenegro de Wit states, sustainable agriculture should not be "contained to the countryside." By bringing these techniques into communities, learning opportunities arise as well as the chance of converting land from an "emissions-source" to a "carbon sink", as Robert Biel writes.
Community gardens provide miniature ecological reserves with flowers and food for many kinds of birds, insects and animals. Larger gardens with adequate space may host beehives.
Health.
Community gardens benefit community food access by enhancing nutrition and physical activity. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends eating more dark green vegetables, orange vegetables, legumes, and fruits; eating less refined grains, fat, and calories; and obtaining 60 minutes of physical activity on most days. Recent public health evaluations show community gardens as a promising approach to promote healthy behaviors. This is particularly important in establishing healthy behaviors among children, given the rise of childhood obesity. A pilot study in Los Angeles showed a gardening and nutrition intervention improved dietary intake in children and reduced body mass index.
Community gardens benefit community food security by providing residents with a culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system. Community garden initiatives have inspired cities to enact policies for water use, improved access to produce, strengthened community building skills, and created culturally appropriate education programs that help elevate the community's collective consciousness about public health. In impoverished urban areas especially, produce harvested from community gardens provides a nutritious alternative to what Nancy Janovicek calls "the industrial diet," which consists of cheap and accessible options like fast food.
Professor Jill Litt and colleagues at the University of Colorado School of Public Health evaluated the effects on community gardening in the Denver metro area by studying the social environment, community building, and fruit and vegetable intake. Community gardeners were more likely than home gardeners and non-gardeners to meet the national recommendations of fruit and vegetable intake. Semi structured interviews carried out by Teig "et al." revealed that Denver community gardeners felt a high level of trust between members of the garden and a strong sense of community. Furthermore, gardeners were involved in community voluntary efforts and donated surplus produce to populations without access to fresh produce.
Social.
Agricultural activity in communities is a way of promoting self-sufficiency, as well as community empowerment and involvement. Additionally, producing food, helping the environment, and creating green spaces in cities contributes to an overall increase in happiness. Space in cities and communities reserved for growing vegetables and flowers promotes wellbeing, neighborliness, and the protection of nature.
Resources.
The American Community Gardening Association is a non-profit organization promoting community gardens in the United States and Canada through various support programs including advocacy, training, conferences and events, and resources. Master gardener programs in all 50 U.S. states and 8 Canadian provinces are volunteer programs that train individuals in the science and art of gardening, and have resources to help people set up and manage a new garden. The University of Illinois Extension provides resources for Cook County, Illinois, as well as a video series, titled "Community Gardens - 10 Steps to Successful Community Gardens", to assist organizations or groups who are researching the process of starting their own community garden. The University of Missouri Extension created a Community Gardening Tool Kit