community gardens
Results of a U.S. and Canada community garden survey: Shared challenges in garden management amid diverse geographical and organizational contexts
Community gardens are of increasing interest to scholars, policymakers, and community organizations but there has been little systematic study of community garden management at a broad scale. This study complements case study research by revealing shared experiences of community garden management across different contexts. In partnership with the American Community Gardening Association, we developed an online questionnaire.
Best practices in community garden management to address participation, water access, and outreach
As community gardens expand across the U.S., Extension professionals can support them not only in horticultural education but also in planning and organization. Knowledge of community garden management is helpful in this regard. Existing research focuses on outcomes and criteria for successful gardens, but is less clear about how community gardens work. We use ethnographic methods to examine community garden management in New Jersey. Spatial and social contexts shape key issues such as water access, participation, and horticultural techniques.
Validating verdancy or vacancy? The relationship of community gardens and vacant lands in the U.S.
Highlights
•Community gardens are often seen as temporary uses of vacant land.
•Gardeners see them as important parts of neighborhoods and cities.
•Local governments and organizations historically planned gardens to be temporary.
•Increasingly, gardeners reproduce those dominant narratives as well.
•Rethinking these transformations can lead to better policy toward vacant land.
Abstract
Governmentality in urban food production? Following “community” from intentions to outcomes
Community-produced spaces such as community gardens are attracting widespread scholarly interest for the potential of not only food production, but also for social, environmental, and educational benefits. Yet community gardens have also been scrutinized as sites of governmentality that produce neoliberal subjects. In this article, six case studies are analyzed as representative of three ways to organize and manage gardens—grassroots, externally-organized, and active nonprofit management.
Cultivating Hybrid Collectives: Research Methods for Enacting Community Food Economies in Australia and the Philippines
In this paper authors Cameron, Gibson and Hill discuss two research projects in Australia and the Philippines in which we have cultivated hybrid collectives of academic researchers, lay researchers and various nonhuman others with the intention of enacting community food economies. We feature three critical interactions in the 'hybrid collective research method': gathering, reassembling and translating.
A Helping Hand and Many Green Thumbs
This paper reveals how ethical economic decision making in a government-led local food project in the Philippines is generating social surplus, creating and sustaining commons and building a community-based food economy.
Growing the Community of Community Gardens: Research Contributions
This paper discusses a performative research project conducted with community gardeners in Newcastle Australia.