Research & reports

Michael Sifferman · Digital Commons - CSUMB (California State University, Monterey Bay) · United States (California)

For a capstone project, a school garden comprising an herb, vegetable, and flower garden was built at Meadowlark Elementary. The author taught garden-related lessons to kindergarten classes, integrating various subject standards. A random survey of parents and teachers was conducted to assess the project's usefulness.

A. D. Jones, Jennie Popp · Discovery The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural Food and Life Sciences · United States

This research aims to develop enterprise budgets for sustainable school gardens as part of a service learning program at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (UAF). These budgets are used to evaluate the costs and returns of producing crops that meet three criteria: minimal negative environmental impact, just-in-time production for school needs, and financial solvency. The research focuses on developing enterprise budgets for four crops—chili peppers, cabbage, corn, and tomatoes—and an interactive Excel® budgeting tool to evaluate revenues and expenses.

David M Ahronian, Kelly R Ashton, Erin G Bassett, Maxwell A Cohen, Victor J Czulak, Gregory S Dunbar, Brendan T Farragher, Jonathan L Gorman, Peter L Guy, Timothy J Iles, Piyawut Inthasorn, Travis A Johnson, Jonathan B. Koch, Justin J Kronewitter, Zachary B Livingston, Matthew Morano, Brian Mulvehill, Kevin Murphy, Sean P O'Connell, Peter W. Stephens, Christopher Tourigny, Bryce P White, Timothy E Young · ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · United States (Springfield)

This work explores a service learning strategy within an Urban Design Studio at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, focused on envisioning Springfield's North End. The project aimed to stimulate conversation, develop green design strategies, improve services, and foster cultural engagement to enhance the community's vibrancy and quality of life. It proposes that improved physical, cultural, and social connectivity is key to achieving these goals, and identified six sustainable learning and planning principles, including urban agriculture and education for healthy living.

J. C. Pawelek, Gordon W. Frankie, Robbin W. Thorp, Maggie Przybylski · Cities and the Environment · United States (California)

A community garden in San Luis Obispo, California, was modified by planting bee-attractive plants to attract native bee pollinators. Garden modification and monitoring of native bees occurred from 2007 through the 2009 growing season. The diversity of collected and observed native bees increased each year, with 40 species in 17 genera recorded to date.

Ernarosa Tominich · Educational Media Reviews Online · United States (Chicago)

"Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska" is a 2008 documentary exploring themes of land use, energy conservation, and urban "green earth" movements in major American cities. Host Wanda Urbanska conducts interviews and visits projects like green rooftop gardens and city farms on vacant lots. The documentary features a Chicago family demonstrating a "green" lifestyle, including communal gardening and local shopping.

June Komisar, Joe Nasr, Mark Gorgolewski · Open House International · Canada

This paper describes how Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, has explored agricultural and food issues as design challenges in various student projects. These projects, ranging from community investigations to thesis projects, integrated food-related strategies like community gardens and edible landscapes, demonstrating their utility in addressing broader design challenges such as social inclusion and sustainable building practices.

Louise Joly · Primary Health Care · United States

This research focus describes three studies exploring the health benefits of gardening as a social activity. The studies investigate how community gardens in Denver, Colorado, contribute to strengthening neighborhoods and health.

Timothy A. Woods, Matt Ernst, Stan Ernst, N. C. Wright · · United States

This report summarizes the major findings from a 2009 survey of 205 Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) producers across nine states in the United States (IL, IN, OH, MI, PA, WV, KY, MO, TN). The survey focused on the business and marketing practices employed by these CSA operations. It notes the growing popularity of CSA as a direct farm marketing channel, driven by increased consumer interest in local and organic produce.

Benjamin Shepard · · United States

This study argues that access to space for dialogue is fundamental for democracy to thrive. It states that citizens acting together, sharing opinions, and organizing and supporting spaces for social, cultural, and political engagement should be considered within a framework of democratic participation.

Diana Lee-Smith, M. C. Campbell · Urban Agriculture Magazine · Canada (Toronto)

This article describes the "Carrot City" initiative, which began in Toronto in 2006 when Ryerson University architecture students focused on buildings incorporating urban food production. The concept expanded to include other architecture, planning, design, and landscape architecture schools across Canada and internationally, promoting the integration of urban agriculture into design and planning.

Heather Elizabeth Dalrymple · · United States

This report examines community gardens as a means to address urban food provision and promote sustainable communities. It highlights that community gardens offer benefits beyond food security, such as fostering community development and effectively utilizing open spaces. Through case studies in Cleveland, Ohio, and San Francisco, California, the report demonstrates the adaptability of community gardens in meeting diverse community needs across various urban environments.

LaDona Knigge · Geographica Helvetica · United States (New York City)

A mixed-methods case study drawn from a larger study of community gardens in Buffalo, New York, United States. It examines issues of public space, citizenship, gender and race in the context of state restructuring and welfare reform that shifted responsibility for social services toward private communities through elimination, privatization or devolvement. The study found connections between community organizations' commitment to community gardening and their involvement in providing social, youth and emergency services, including after-school programs, tutoring, refugee services and winter coat drives. It concludes that the everyday lives of Buffalo residents cannot be separated from the effects of larger structural processes such as deindustrialization, privatization and state restructuring.

Majora Carter · Anglican Theological Review · United States

This piece, published in the Anglican Theological Review, is a first-person essay by an author raised in the South Bronx, New York, discussing environmental injustice and hopes for greening in the neighborhood. It states that the South Bronx is the poorest congressional district in the United States, with over 20% unemployment and more than one-third of residents living in poverty, hosts four power plants and most of New York City's solid waste and sewage processing, and has a childhood asthma hospitalization rate seven times the national average, alongside fewer trees and parks per person than other parts of the city. It cites a 2006 Columbia University report finding learning disabilities in children living nearest to fossil fuel emissions sources. The piece is a personal essay drawing on the author's experience and advocacy rather than an empirical study, and presents no methodology or sample.

Rich Pirog, Ross Baxter, Kate Lyon · Iowa State University Digital Repository (Iowa State University) · United States

This Iowa State University document is a practical guidance resource, not an empirical study. In response to growing interest in and demand for local food in Iowa and nationally, it answers frequently asked questions about food regulations from small market producers who sell through farmers markets, community-supported agriculture (CSA) enterprises, farm stands, and institutions such as restaurants, hospitals, schools, and conference centers. Responses were prepared by state agency and university specialists in food safety and food regulations.

Miranda Martinez · Social movement studies · United States (New York City)

This study of the community garden preservation movement on the Lower East Side of New York examines the role of activist movement framing in the struggle to save hundreds of gardens from destruction. Through repeated confrontations with the Giuliani administration, gardeners de-routinized the process of urban redevelopment by portraying the loss of a garden as an unimaginable violation against themselves and the city. This reframing helped activists compensate for their disempowered political status and was instrumental in forcing the Giuliani administration to negotiate to save the gardens.

Allie Comet · Scholarship @ Claremont (The Claremont Colleges) · United States (California)

This historical analysis of Claremont, California, uses "The Farm" — a two-acre food forest on the Pomona College campus — as a starting point to trace the role food and agriculture have played in the development of the Claremont area, and discusses current local food system alternatives emerging in the area.

Catherine Sands, Lee Reed, Krista Harper, Maggie Shar · Practicing Anthropology · United States

In spring 2008, a grassroots organization called Fertile Ground conducted a participatory Photovoice evaluation of its school garden program with fifth-grade students at Williamsburg Elementary School in rural western Massachusetts, United States. Photovoice places cameras in participants' hands so they document and discuss their own concerns and perspectives. The project aimed to capture what students, after six years of hands-on garden programming, understood about food, nutrition, and community food systems, and their impressions of leadership, fellowship, and care for land and community. The article outlines the evaluation's context and design but does not report specific quantitative findings.

Emma Schroeder, Timothy Kolosick · · United States

This is an oral history interview record concerning the Eagle Heights Community Garden in the United States. In a 2009 interview with Emma Schroeder, Timothy Kolosick recounted his time as garden chairman, growing horseradish, cultivation techniques brought by foreign students, using tires to deter pests, organic gardening, and weed management, and referenced earlier gardening experience he and his wife gained in Europe. The interview was recorded for inclusion in a master's thesis on the Eagle Heights Community Gardens.

Peter A. Werrell, Gail Langellotto, Shannon U. Morath, Kevin C. Matteson · Cities and the Environment · United States (New York City)

A study in New York City community gardens examined how the spatial area dedicated to cucumbers (Cucumis sativus), relative to other flowering plants, influenced the deposition of conspecific and heterospecific pollen on cucumber plants, and also examined the effect of overall garden size on that pollen deposition. Female flowers were collected from potted cucumber plants placed experimentally in the gardens for the study, as well as from cucumbers established in raised beds by community garden members; pollen grains were isolated in the laboratory by acetolysis and the numbers of heterospecific and conspecific pollen grains were quantified. The abstract does not report quantitative results or conclusions.

Bernard Kratky · Acta Horticulturae (University of Hawaii) · United States

Developed by Bernard Kratky at the University of Hawaii and first published in Acta Horticulturae in 2009, the Kratky method is a passive, non-circulating hydroponic technique requiring no electricity or pumps. Plants sit in net pots floating over a nutrient reservoir; as the water level drops, an air gap forms between roots and liquid, letting "oxygen roots" develop. Considered the simplest hydroponic system, it suits leafy greens but not water-hungry crops.

· Wikipedia · United States

This Wikipedia article covers San Francisco's Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance (No. 100-09), passed by the Board of Supervisors in 2009 and described as the first US municipal ordinance to universally require source separation of all organic material. By August 2010 the city reached a 77% waste diversion rate, and composting increased 45% after the ordinance took effect. An earlier 1999 pilot, the 'Fantastic Three' programme, achieved over 90% diversion among participants within seven months. The ordinance polled at 85% support before passing; maximum fines are $100 for single-family homes and $1,000 for large businesses.

Alaimo K., Packnett E., Miles R. A., Kruger D. J. · Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 40(2):94-101 · United States

Cross-sectional phone survey of 766 adults in Flint, Michigan. Households participating in community gardens were far more likely (32% vs 18%) to consume fruits and vegetables at least five times daily.

Weber C., Matthews H. · Environmental Science & Technology · United States

Production dominates US food-related life-cycle emissions (about 83%), while all transport accounts for roughly 11% and final delivery only about 4%, undermining the assumption that local food is low-carbon and that cutting food-miles via urban growing yields large climate gains.

Mary Beth Pudup · Geoforum · USA (San Francisco Bay Area)

Argues that 'organized garden projects' proliferate in roll-out neoliberal institutions (jails, schools, clinics) to cultivate self-governing citizen-subjects, reframing gardening policy as a technology for downloading social responsibility onto 'at-risk' individuals.

Ioan Voicu, Vicki Been · Real Estate Economics · United States (New York City)

This study estimated the impact of community gardens on neighborhood property values in New York City using a difference-in-difference hedonic regression model. The findings indicate that community gardens have significant positive effects on property values, particularly in the poorest neighborhoods. Higher-quality gardens were observed to have the greatest positive impact.