The Benefits of Community Gardens
In recent years, community gardens have been sprouting up across the nation, with their popularity growing year by year. Community gardens provide essential services for local communities, and have even been used to promote resilience during the pandemic. While these gardens are an intuitively good idea, the full extent of their benefits might surprise you!
Here’s a quick overview of community gardens, and a delightful deep dive into their abundant advantages.
WHAT IS A COMMUNITY GARDEN?
The CDC defines community gardens as “collaborative projects on shared open spaces where participants share in the maintenance and products of the garden, including healthful and affordable fresh fruits and vegetables.” A form of urban gardening, these gardens are recognized as healthy additions to communities, and provide a wealth of benefits for gardeners and the broader community as a whole.
Community Garden Benefits
POSITIVE IMPACTS ON PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH
Engaging in community gardening will reap lots of benefits for your health, both physical and mental. First of all, gardening can be a fulfilling source of exercise, improving your endurance, strength, balance, and flexibility. If your work doesn’t afford you much physical activity and the busyness of life makes exercise hard to fit in, a community garden can be the perfect place to get your activity in while also being productive with your time!
Additionally, community gardening promotes better health by increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables. One study of a community gardening project found that it “held many health benefits, including a nearly four-fold increase in vegetable intake among adults and a three-fold increase among children.” Healthy diets are a crucial part of your overall health and well-being, meaning the benefits of those garden-grown fruits and veggies will spill into other areas of your life too.
Gardening is not only a boost for your physical health, but for your mental health as well. It can positively impact health outcomes by reducing anxiety, depression, and stress, helping to regulate mood, and connecting people to nature.
INCREASED FOOD SECURITY
One of the more obvious benefits of community gardening initiatives is an increase in food security. According to the USDA, more than 38 million people struggled with food insecurity in 2020 alone. Community gardens can be a crucial resource to help fill the meal gap by providing fresh, healthy food at little or no cost.
ECONOMIC BENEFITS
In addition to helping families stretch food budgets by supplying fresh produce, community gardens bring many other economic benefits, both for participants and the local community. Gardeners themselves can benefit economically by skill building, as they learn techniques in food production, planning, and even business. Community gardens that set up stands at farmers markets also engage with and stimulate the local economy.
The economic impacts of community gardens go even further, with noted improvements on neighboring property values. By increasing property values and adding aesthetic beauty to the area, community gardens can be an effective driver of community redevelopment.
SOCIAL CONNECTION
The community aspect is a large part of what makes community gardens so beneficial in so many ways. A study of community gardening’s effect on stress, well-being, and resilience found that “community gardeners reported significantly higher levels of subjective well-being than individual/home gardeners,” indicating that “engagement in community gardening may be superior to individual/home gardening.”
Community gardens are spaces of engagement and cooperation, leading to social interaction, the development of friendships, and an enhanced sense of community and belonging. They also support positive social dynamics in communities because they often take over vacant lots, therefore eradicating places that tend to promote criminal activity.
CREATION OF GREEN SPACE
Community gardens enliven and benefit local areas by creating green space. Green spaces—areas with partial or full vegetation cover such as parks, walking trails, and gardens—are extraordinarily beneficial in urban environments. They not only enhance the local environment through ecosystem processes, but also deliver restorative psychological benefits.
ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS
Where community gardens flourish, local environments flourish as well! The growth of new and varied plants improves both air and soil quality in and around gardening spaces. Additionally, community gardening projects are forms of sustainable agriculture, and promote healthy food production while avoiding the harmful effects of industrial agriculture.
Community gardens also improve the microclimate of the local area, and can help reduce urban environmental issues like the urban heat island.
BENEFITS FOR IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES
In addition to these diverse and far-reaching benefits, community gardens also provide crucial support for immigrant and refugee populations. These communities benefit from all of the above impacts like increased food security and improved mental health, but also gain a handful of more focused advantages.
First of all, community gardens have been well established as environments that promote cross-cultural relations. They act as safe spaces for immigrants, refugees, and other marginalized groups to become involved with the larger community and develop important and meaningful social connections. Gardens are also an opportunity for immigrants and refugees to physically connect with the land, cultivating a tactile and intimate relationship with a place that may feel distinctly unfamiliar.
Community gardens can develop this connection to new environments while simultaneously meeting a need for connection with culture and traditions. This can be accomplished when immigrant and refugee gardeners are provided with the means to grow ethnic food. Vegetables, fruits, herbs, and more that are used in culturally significant dishes can bring powerful emotional benefits.
One study of a refugee gardening project reported that “refugee gardeners expressed receiving physical and emotional benefits from gardening, including a sense of identity with their former selves,” and that gardens “may serve as a meaningful health promotion intervention for refugees and immigrants adjusting to the complexity of their new lives in the U.S. and coping with past traumas.”
Here at One New Humanity, we serve immigrant, refugee, and low-income communities in the Banglatown area of Detroit and Hamtramck. We run our very own community garden, named Sylhet Farm after the plentiful region of Bangladesh. In 2021 alone, we produced around 600lbs of fruits and vegetables that were distributed for free or very low cost to Banglatown residents at the Sylhet Farmers Market. This year, we’ve rented out 114 community garden plots, and we are so excited to see the amazing benefits our gardeners and community will reap!
Sylhet Farm and our other community initiatives like Sisterhood Fitness and the upcoming C. Love Bakery make an incredible impact on the lives of Banglatown residents. You can be part of that by donating now to support our work! If you’re in the Detroit area, consider dropping off in-kind donations, organizing a collection drive, or shopping at our nonprofit thrift store, Joy Thrift in Hamtramck! Together we can elevate our beautiful community, and bring joy and support to those who need it most.