Community Gardening in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods in Phoenix, Arizona: Aligning Programs with Perceptions

Urban Farm DB summary

Researchers studied a struggling community gardening program in a low-income minority neighborhood in Phoenix, Arizona, operated within a larger local food initiative led by a nonprofit community development organization. Based on interviews and participant observation used to build an exploratory survey, the study found that while residents had gardening interest and experience, awareness of the program itself was low, perceptions of gardening's benefits and burdens varied among current gardeners, ex-gardeners, and those who had never gardened, and the benefits residents cited often differed from the goals stated by the local food initiative.