Identifying Key Benefits and Characteristics of Community Gardening for Vulnerable Populations: A Systematic Review

Urban Farm DB summary

The first systematic review to summarize the benefits of community gardening for vulnerable populations such as low-socioeconomic-status and culturally diverse groups. Analyzing 33 studies, it finds social connection, health, education, and nutrition to be the most frequently reported benefits, supporting social inclusion and welfare.

Only numbers and their conditions are stored, as structured data — never the source's own sentences. Metric and condition names stay in English, as coded.

• 33

  studies included(community gardening)

  Socialn = 33

  study design

  systematic-review

  population

  vulnerable-populations

  years

  1985-2022

  language

  english

• 13

  databases searched(community gardening)

  Social

  study design

  systematic-review

  years

  1985-2022

• females overrepresented

  sex representation(community gardening participant)

  Socialn = 33

  study design

  systematic-review

  population

  vulnerable-populations

• moderate

  study quality(community gardening study)

  Socialn = 33

  study design

  systematic-review

Direction of conclusions

Each author conclusion is recorded only as a coded direction per topic. Read the original for the conclusion itself.

• Community cohesionSupportsWith caveats
• Nutrition and healthSupportsWith caveats
• Education and learningSupportsWith caveats

Vulnerable communities (including people from refugee, Indigenous, culturally and linguistically diverse, and low socioeconomic backgrounds) represent the most at-risk populations facing inequities and negative health, economic, and social outcomes. The recent COVID-19 pandemic both highlighted and fuelled these disparities. Community gardening has emerged as a community-based solution to address these inequities, yet the research literature has largely considered outcomes for the general population rather than those with the most need. This paper represents the first systematic review to summarise the evidence on the broad impact of community gardening on outcomes for vulnerable populations. A systematic search of 13 databases (PubMed, Medline, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Academic Search Complete, Education Source, Education Resources Information Center, Psychology and Behavioral Science Collection, SocINDEX, and Allied Health and Complementary Medicine Database) for English language articles from 1985 to 2022 was conducted. There were 33 studies identified where females were substantially overrepresented in the studies compared to males, and the main criteria for vulnerability included low socioeconomic-status and culturally diverse populations. Findings revealed that community gardening provides a wide range of benefits for vulnerable populations, with social connection, health, education, and nutrition being the more commonly cited. A relative emphasis on benefits of social connections, education, and nutrition is apparent for vulnerable populations in comparison to reviews considering the general population. The quality of studies was evaluated as moderate with little information provided about program characteristics. These shortcomings reduce the understanding of what characteristics are most likely to result in improvements and limit the capacity of practitioners to translate research into policy and practice for vulnerable communities.