6 Astounding Benefits to Community Gardening
As a child, I would walk along the streets of Houston, Texas planting acorn after acorn with my grandfather. He spent years of his life collecting hundreds of acorns and the trees he planted with his community gardening group still stand and continue to grow today. It seems right to garden alongside other human beings, as if that’s what people were made to do. Gardening, when shared with others, can be a special experience where people learn, bond, and create.
Community gardens have been around for hundreds of years. They have been places of livelihood in dark times of financial despair, and they have been places of home and community where people gather to provide nutrient filled organic produce.
Today, community gardens can take many different shapes and forms. You can participate in a local group that helps plant trees like my grandfather did, partner with your neighbor gardening in a connecting piece of your properties, or it could be partaking in planting your personal garden alongside other gardeners in a park, church, or school.
Community gardens are unique in that they take a very individual experience and allow them to be shared with others. Community gardening is for everybody – those that don’t have the space in your yard, those that live in a neighborhood that has rules against setting up a garden, or those people that just want to meet new people with shared interests. In case you need just a little more push, here are six astounding benefits to community gardening for the novice and the experienced gardener combined.
Benefits to Community Gardening
- Learn from Other Gardeners
Gardening can be a personal experience. You might have a way of growing your tomatoes that has worked well for you for years. However, when you partake in a community garden, you might not have ever realized sticks tied together make a great trellis or that you can use kale to make a pesto.Recently, I decided to grown a pumpkin plant in my yard. Knowing the large amount of space they need to grow, I placed them in a spot in my yard that doesn’t get utilized as much use as it is behind my garage. This also happens to be a space right next to my neighbor’s yard.
It was such a joy to walk out one morning to see that my neighbor used string and sticks and his own bush to trellis my pumpkin up. He too had planted tomatoes, basil and mint and utilized space that would not have been used except to grow weeds. I would have never thought to do that the way he did.
When you participate in a community garden, you get an amazing opportunity to learn new ways garden that you might not have thought of yourself. Even if you don’t set up a space in a community garden, walking through them will be a great way to learn from others too.
- Meet New People with Shared Interests
Community gardening opens yourself up to new relationships. If I had not planted my pumpkin in that spot in my yard, I might never have gotten to know my neighbor in a more personal way. It connected us in this shared passion.Participating in a community garden gives you the opportunity to grow and meet people you might never have met before and people who have a shared interest as you.
- Extra Space
Using a community garden is a great way to maximize the space you want for gardening. Having a smaller yard that doesn’t have much room, or no yard at all should never be reasons not to garden. Community gardens can be an ideal option for an urban community as well. Maybe your yard doesn’t have enough shade or too much shade – using a spot in a community garden can be a great option. - Increases a Sense of community and Belonging
When you partake in a community garden, you are investing your time and energy back into your community. This can increase your sense of belonging and grow your appreciation for where you live and for the people you live next to. When an individual is invested into their community, it will create satisfaction and a grown sense of well-being. - Creates Sustainability
Sustainability is the ability to provide for oneself. In communities that have low income coming across rich food can be harder than one realizes. A community garden opens up doors to teach and expose, but the entire community about garden and how to provide for oneself. According to Kami Pothukuchi, Associate Professor of urban planning at Wayne State University and Director of Seed Wayne:Community gardens provide access to fresh, traditional produce and nutritionally rich foods in low-income neighborhoods, where nutritious food is much less available than in other areas. “A study of all food stores in three low-income zip codes in Detroit found that only 19%, or fewer than one in five stores, carried a minimal ‘healthy food basket’ [of] products based on the food pyramid” (Pothukuchi 2003) Source
There is something powerful and empowering when you have to knowledge and tools to be able to feed your own family from something you made from your own hands. When community gardens are created, they give that opportunity to help families learn how to provide for themselves.
- Teaching Opportunity for Youth
Gardening is a great opportunity to help encourage youth to learn and grow. Gardening will exposes youth to plants and vegetables that they might not have had the opportunity to learn about. This is especially important in urban communities where exposure to organic produce might be limited.It’s also a great opportunity to learn together with a child. It’s always a sweet moment for me when I discover something new alongside youth and children. There is an added spark of curiosity that is energizing.
Take Away
Community gardens are treasure that should be experienced by all. There are many different ways to experience community gardening and it is important to find the right fit for you. However, you choose to experience a community garden the benefits of friendship, belonging, and learning will be treasures you bring along with you the rest of your life. Sweet memories will be created just like the ones I created with my own grandfather many years ago.
Your Turn
How have you experienced community gardening? We would love to hear about your experience in the comment section below.
