Research & reports

Haase · People and Nature · Germany (Berlin)

Assesses the social–environmental values of urban gardens for both gardeners and the wider public, using Berlin as an example.

· Local Environment · United Kingdom (Aberdeen)

Based on interviews with food-growing project participants in Aberdeen, UK, finds unexpected wellbeing effects of urban food activism, notably heavy burdens on volunteer coordinators of community gardens.

· Local Environment · United Kingdom

Uses grassroots visual storytelling to explore how community food-growing activities build community bonds through emotional attachment and placemaking.

Abigail Schoneboom, Daniel Mallo, Armelle Tardiveau · Journal of Classical Sociology · United Kingdom

This sensory ethnographic study, using pinhole photography, explored how time is experienced by unemployed volunteers at a community garden in the north-east of England. It found that the garden's ability to provide meaningful time is rooted in its food-growing and composting cycles, as well as enduring elements like mature trees and volunteer-made structures. The study argues that urban community gardens offer an "elongated present" that fulfills individuals and sustains community and nature.

Valentina Cattivelli · Journal of urban regeneration and renewal · Italy (Lombardy)

This paper describes the profile of foreign urban gardeners in Lombardy, Italy, based on questionnaire responses from municipalities. Foreign gardeners predominantly originate from North Africa and Eastern Europe, are mostly over 40 years old, married, and have children. While many Lombard municipalities have urban gardening projects, there is no regional database of cultivated plots or specific information on gardens cultivated by foreign-born residents.

Branduini P. · Virtual Community of Pathological Anatomy (University of Castilla La Mancha) · Italy (Milan)

This paper reflects on management and training issues in landscape restoration, based on two pilot water meadow restoration sites in the Milanese peri-urban agricultural area. A training course for "campari" (water flow controllers) was organized at the second site, attracting diverse participants including professionals and vulnerable groups. While the course increased participant awareness, it resulted in a decrease in restoration quality compared to work by professionals at the first site. This led to a participatory management process involving owners, tenants, and volunteers to address the landscape's high perishability.

Caroline Verfuerth, Angelina Sanderson Bellamy, Barbora Adlerová, Amy Dutton · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · United Kingdom

Failures of the current food system are described as sitting at the core of multiple overlapping crises, shaping both consumption choices and food production, with low-income households disproportionately affected—their food security and access to healthy, sustainable food impacted as a result. Community-supported agriculture (CSA) is framed as a bottom-up response toward agri-food system transformation, an alternative food system built on locally sold, agroecologically grown food rooted in social values, and, alongside other food citizenship movements and alternative food networks (AFNs), driven by a vision of a democratic, socially and economically just, environmentally sustainable food system. Yet low-income households are underrepresented in the CSA community. This paper reports findings from a co-produced intervention between the research team, four CSA farms in Wales, United Kingdom, and two food aid partners, seeking ways to improve CSA membership accessibility for food-insecure households: 38 households received a weekly vegetable bag for two to four months, and 16 household members were interviewed at the project's start and at the end of the harvest season. Using a food well-being framework, the study found that CSA membership holistically improved food well-being by strengthening producer-consumer relationships, increasing availability of healthy foods, helping people care for their own and their families' well-being, and building place-based food capability and literacy—results the authors use to support calls for prioritizing food well-being interventions to benefit financially excluded, food-insecure households within localized AFNs.

Wood C. J., Barton J. L., Wicks C. L. · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(20):13166 · United Kingdom

A longitudinal study tracking 53 people with mental illness referred to the therapeutic community garden 'Growing Together' in Essex, UK, showing that participation improved wellbeing, reduced loneliness and raised life satisfaction. Benefits held even across the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting the value of green social prescribing.

Wood C.J., Polley M., Barton J.L., Wicks C.L. · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · United Kingdom

Interviews with 13 stakeholders (social prescribing link workers and garden staff) and focus groups with 20 garden members examined how therapeutic community gardening supports mental health through nature engagement, hope, and social support, and identified barriers to referral and attendance.

Moore E.J., Thew M. · British Journal of Occupational Therapy · United Kingdom

Semi-structured online interviews with six care leavers aged 18-24 explored their experiences of a socially prescribed community allotment gardening group, yielding themes of social belonging, a safe space, achievement, and the facilitatory aspects of nature.

· Sustainability · Italy

A case-studies analysis examining the development of sustainable social farming in Italy, addressing social inclusion and the training and employment of disadvantaged people.

· Sustainability · Italy

A study of social farming in North-Eastern Italy from the farmers' perspective, examining challenges and prospects with a focus on the social and work inclusion of disadvantaged people.

Rhys Furlong, Caroline Harvey, Fiona Holland, Jenny Hallam · NECTAR - Northampton Electronic Collection of Thesis and Research (University of Northampton) · United Kingdom (Nottingham)

Seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with allotment gardeners from low-income areas of Nottingham, UK, 12 months after they began their tenancy at St Ann's allotments. This interview data was used for an interpretative phenomenological analysis published in "Cities and Health." Due to ethical and commercial issues, the data underpinning this publication is not openly available.

Maddy Power · Policy Press eBooks · United Kingdom

In the UK, food banks and other food aid providers expanded significantly in parallel with welfare reforms and benefit cuts initiated after 2010. This contemporary phenomenon occurred within a historical context of long-standing community-based responses to poverty and hunger in the UK.

Marta Camps‐Calvet, Santiago Gorostiza, David Saurı́ · Antipode · Spain (Barcelona)

This study examined social reproduction practices surrounding food in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939. Core findings informed the role of women in food provision and production through individual subsistence agriculture, involvement in Barcelona’s anarcho-syndicalist agricultural collective, and participation in agriculture education and training programs. The research was based on original archival data, historical press, and interviews with witnesses of the war.

Neven Tandarić, Charles Watkins, Christopher D. Ives · Urban forestry & urban greening · Europe

Interviewing users of community and allotment gardens in Zagreb, Croatia, this study explored motivations for gardening and how different forms of garden management shape the generation of cultural ecosystem services (CES), supplementing and contextualizing responses with interviews of urban planners, academics, and gardening activists. Using the Fish et al. (2016) framework to identify CES in interviews, the study grouped gardeners' motivations into six categories: escape, usefulness and tradition, home-grown produce, socializing, wellness, and private oasis. Food production was found to be only of secondary importance as a motivator of urban gardening.

Bourdon E., Belmin J. · Alzheimer's Research & Therapy, 13:116 · France

A multi-centre pilot controlled trial across four French nursing homes testing 'enriched gardens'—conventional sensory gardens augmented with activity-prompting features. Among 120 residents with dementia, use of enriched gardens improved cognitive function and mobility compared with conventional gardens or no garden. It offers concrete guidance for using gardens in the environmental design of elderly care.

Marian Simón Rojo · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems · Spain (Madrid)

This study investigated how urban planning can support agroecological and right-to-food movements to create resilient urban food systems, addressing food insecurity. A case study in Madrid, Spain, found that over 14% of the population was food insecure, despite the presence of more than 400 free food distribution nodes. The analysis covered various programs and urban food initiatives, suggesting that urban planning provides tools to apply community-supported agroecological food system qualities to define context-adapted strategies, thereby reducing reliance on the industrial food sector.

Emmanuelle Faure, Corinne Luxembourg, Angélique Dupont · Presses universitaires du Septentrion eBooks · France (Gennevillois)

This chapter proposes understanding urban agriculture, specifically shared gardens in Gennevilliers, as part of a collective project to develop a more environmentally respectful, food-producing city. It also views urban agriculture as a potential lever for women's emancipation. The study will explore how urban agriculture can foster collective responsibility and become a concrete vector for changing relationships within the Gennevilliers context.

Peter Gittins, Leigh Morland · The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation · United Kingdom

This case study explored the business model and growth challenges of 'Growing Better', a micro-social enterprise urban farming facility in the Leeds City Region, UK, which provides a supportive working environment for people with mental health issues. Findings suggested that the potential for growth lies with the social entrepreneur's ability to harness external stakeholder support. However, any venture development should also inform the effective utilization of resources through operations management.

Sam Ramsden · Local Environment · United Kingdom (England)

This article analyzes a charity-led community gardening project in a disadvantaged northern English community, which operated for three years with external funding. While it successfully engaged marginalized people, leading to increased skills, confidence, reduced isolation, and improved wellbeing, the project faced significant challenges requiring professional management. Crucially, after the funding ended, the community garden's future was fragile, and the long-term sustainability of outcomes for marginalized participants was vulnerable due to economic viability issues.

Bethan R. Mead, Jessica Davies, Natalia Falagán, Sofia Kourmpetli, Lingxuan Liu, Charlotte A. Hardman · Emerald Open Research · United Kingdom

A cross-sectional online survey of 477 UK adults (March-April 2020) investigated the role of home food growing during the early COVID-19 lockdown. Participants engaged in home food growing reported lower perceived food insecurity and higher well-being than non-growers. There were no differences in opinions of urban agriculture compared to pre-pandemic data from a separate sample (N=583).

Clare Jackson, Sara Ronzi · Health Education & Behavior · United Kingdom

A 2021 study used photovoice methods to explore residents' perceptions and experiences of "The Grange," a community-led, multifaceted intervention incorporating a community hub and garden in a small, high-deprivation, poor-health area of North-West England. Through photographs, semi-structured interviews, a focus group, and a photo exhibition, it engaged intensively with six residents, who identified positive and negative aspects of activities such as the community garden and community shop and communicated recommendations directly to policymakers at the exhibition event. Participants reported valuing the culture of inclusivity and friendship associated with The Grange more than the specific activities themselves.

Ágnes Gagyi, Csaba Jelinek, Zsuzsanna Pósfai, András Vígvári · · Europe

This chapter examines the 2000s housing financialization wave in Hungary, analysing financial over-inclusion and exclusion -- alternating dynamics of reaping gains and externalizing costs. It shows that "intermediate" rural-urban transitional zones are prime areas for high-risk mortgage lending while also containing spaces excluded from institutionalized housing finance, using as its case study an allotment garden where households combine formal jobs and mortgage repayment with informal dwelling to reduce housing costs, arguing that such informal reproductive solutions function as a resource for capital accumulation through inclusion and exclusion.

Tharrey M., Sachs A., Perignon M., Simon C., Mejean C., Litt J., Darmon N. · BMC Public Health · France (Montpellier)

A quasi-experimental study in Greater Montpellier comparing 66 new community garden participants with 66 matched controls found no significant shifts toward more sustainable lifestyles (diet, physical activity, well-being) after one year of garden participation.