The Impact of Royal Botanic Gardens’ Community Greening Program on Perceived Health, Wellbeing, and Social Benefits in Social Housing Communities in NSW

Urban Farm DB summary

This study revisits the "Community Greening" partnership established in 1999 between the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney and Housing New South Wales, extending from a 2004 program evaluation report to reconsider community gardening within the changing urban and peri-urban landscape of metropolitan NSW. The program has reached almost 100,000 participants since 2000 and established 627 community and youth-led community gardens across NSW; using a pre- and post-test design, this study tracked six new garden sites established in 2017, aiming to examine whether community gardening is associated with an elevated sense of community, health and wellbeing in low-income communities, and how new gardeners' experiences relate to self-reported wellbeing and engagement.