Research & reports

Rubén Darío Peña Chacón, Viviana Alejandra Vergel Rojas · · Colombia (Bogotá)

This project implemented an educommunicative strategy through a communication piece to promote the visibility and recognition of the "Guerreros y Guerreras Unidos en Acción" urban garden in Fontanar del Río, Suba, Bogotá. The garden strengthens social fabric, offers cultivation activities and urban agriculture training, and aims to share knowledge on good practices for organic food cultivation for self-consumption and as a business option. The goal is to make the garden's urban agriculture processes and organic products visible in Bogotá, demonstrating how environmental actions can foster social cohesion, good food practices, business opportunities, and coexistence.

К. Г. Ткаченко · HORTUS BOTANICUS · Global

Botanical institutions should create and maintain diverse plant collections, including local flora, ethnobotanical knowledge, and carpological collections, for research and education. These collections can inform urban gardening and floristics, but it is crucial to evaluate the invasive potential of introduced species to prevent their spread in the region's flora.

Bessie M. Burgos, Henry Custodio, Shun-Nan Chiang, Anna Gale C. Vallez, Elson Ian Nyl Ebreo Galang, Maria Katrina R. Punto, Leila S. Africa, Blesilda M. Calub · · Philippines

The School-Plus-Home Gardens Project (S+HGP) was implemented in six pilot schools in Laguna province, Philippines, through a collaboration of SEARCA, UPLB, and DepEd. This project focused on nutrition, education, and economic well-being by providing school garden harvests for school feeding programs and establishing food gardens in children's homes. The S+HGP demonstrated the multi-functionality of school gardens as learning laboratories for sustainability, food and nutrition, organic agriculture, climate change, and solid waste management.

Edgar Alfredo Portilla-Flores · DU & P: revista de diseño urbano y paisaje · Global

This article discusses urban agriculture as a contemporary practice that requires understanding across multiple dimensions. It states that urban and peri-urban food production encompasses not only agronomic aspects but also relates to food security, public policies, urban planning, entrepreneurship, recycling culture, environmental education, and recreational and therapeutic activities.

Anelise Pillon Ortiz, Lilian Regina Lengler Abentroth, Polliana Radtke dos Santos, Edna Linhares Garcia, Suzane Beatriz Frantz Krug · RBONE - Revista Brasileira de Obesidade, Nutrição e Emagrecimento · Global

This narrative literature review aimed to identify the results of implementing vegetable gardens in school environments and analyze their impact on children, adolescents, and family life. Out of 28 analyzed articles, 13 answered the research question. The study concludes that school gardens have positive repercussions on the lives of children and adolescents, directly influencing food behavior, fostering environmental awareness, improving school performance, and enhancing social interaction and quality of life for those involved.

Andréia Quinto dos Santos, Ricardo Jucá‐Chagas, Regileno da Silva Santana, Evton Farias Quinto Santos, ALISSON SANTOS DA SILVA · Brazilian Journal of Development · Global

This research evaluated the limits and possibilities of learning ecological interactions in elementary school using a school garden, involving a supervising teacher, a classroom teacher, and 30 students. While students demonstrated understanding of ecological interactions through oral communication, the study identified significant limitations including difficulties in reading and writing, a lack of volunteers, and insufficient technical and administrative support from the school.

Nina Gren · Lund University Publications (Lund University) · Sweden

This presentation, based on ethnographic research from 2017-2018 in the Malmö-Lund area, Sweden, examines creativity in urban gardening projects as a response to ecological crisis. Urban gardeners, particularly project coordinators, expressed concerns about ecological emergency and sought to promote sustainable living. They developed creative events and workshops for children, including storytelling, planting, harvesting, and making 'bee hotels', to educate them on ecological issues and inspire aspirations for a different future.

Edgar Ortiz-Mena, Jairo Ricardo Mora-Delgado · Revista de Ciencias Sociales · Colombia (Sonsón)

This hermeneutic study analyzed the Urban Agriculture Program in Sonsón, Colombia, which aims to improve the living conditions of violence victims. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation with 40 elderly beneficiaries over two months, it was found that while 40% improved their diet through broiler chicken training, beneficiaries perceived that the taught production techniques were time-consuming and did not lead to short-term cost reduction or income increase. The study concludes by recognizing the perceptions and adaptation strategies of families facing change.

Ranjan Datta · Local Environment · Global

This study explored the concept of sustainability among First Nations, visible minorities, and non-visible minorities through cross-cultural activities in a community garden setting, using a relational participatory action research (PAR) process. It argues that cross-cultural activities, such as dance, music, children’s art, anti-racist workshops, traditional story-sharing, land-based learning, and cross-cultural food sharing, can create positive change in an urban environment by empowering communities through cross-cultural bridging.

Kamal Prasad Acharya · Pedagogical Research · Nepal

This study in Nepal aimed to transform chemistry learning from textbooks to school gardens through activity-based learning, involving students and science teachers. In-depth interviews and participant observations revealed that science teachers' positivist congestions, rooted in a dogmatic approach to chemistry teaching, hindered students' eloquent engagement in school gardening activities. The study concluded that positivist epistemology and related traditions superficially forced activity-based chemistry learning in community schools.

Fikile Nxumalo · · Global

In this chapter, the author explores the practices, sociomaterialities, and colonial histories and relations that contribute to the creation of a community garden visited with children and early childhood educators in child care centers where her research is situated. School gardens were widely introduced as tools to teach desired moral and social attributes, such as pride in community and individual responsibility for public property.

Pepijn Schreinemachers, Mamounata Sandaogo Ouedraogo, Serge Diagbouga, Amadou Thiombiano, Serge Rodrigue Kouamé, Caroline Makamto Sobgui, Hsiao-pu Chen, Ray-Yu Yang · Journal of Development Effectiveness · Burkina Faso

A repeated cluster randomized controlled trial in 30 schools with 1,760 schoolchildren (8–14 years old) in Burkina Faso evaluated the impact of school vegetable gardens combined with nutrition education. The study found a small but significant increase in knowledge of sustainable agriculture (+5.0%) and food/nutrition (+6.6%). However, there was no significant increase in other outcome indicators, including fruit and vegetable consumption.

Mohd Hamezan, Intan Syafiqah · · Malaysia

This project, conducted in the Plan B area of Ipoh, Malaysia, investigated urbanized residents' interest in urban gardening and their perception of an ergonomic bamboo seating structure design. A questionnaire survey revealed that 59% of respondents lacked awareness of urban gardening. Among the proposed bamboo seating structure designs, Design 2 was the most selected by 57.8% of respondents, and younger respondents showed the most interest in urban gardens.

Yvonne Black · Management Learning · Global

This article explores a non-traditional qualitative research project that used a creative approach, specifically collaborative performance ethnography, to investigate lived experiences in an urban community garden. Working with a playwright and garden staff/volunteers, the study explored connections between people and nature and their impact on well-being. The creative method, incorporating arts-based inquiry and performance, facilitated relaxed communication with participants and provided new perspectives on data collection and analysis, stimulating discourse on community gardens' role in social and environmental change.

Victoria Holmes · Proceedings of Student Research and Creative Inquiry Day · Global

This literature review analyzed research data from 2002-2018 to investigate the effects of school garden programs on students' fruit and vegetable intake and the impact of increased intake on academic performance. Findings support the claim that school garden programs promote an increase in fruit and vegetable consumption among participating students. In one study, nutrition education and garden-based activities doubled daily fruit and vegetable servings among sixth graders. A positive relationship was shown between academic performance and fruit and vegetable consumption, but more studies are needed to understand long-term effects.

Pierluigi Nicolin · IGI Global eBooks · Global

This article describes the urban farming movement as a global phenomenon, emerging in cities worldwide from Mumbai to Tokyo, where cultivated areas produce food distributed locally. Driven largely by the poor and women on small farms, this politico-cultural movement integrates with urban ecosystems through food production, educational aims, and sustainability. It creates new landscapes that warrant aesthetic analysis and could influence urban visual conventions and lifestyles if scaled up.

A. Hegazy · Scientific Journal of Flowers and Ornamental Plants /Scientific Journal of Flowers and Ornamental Plants · Egypt

This landscaping study, conducted from 2017-2018, investigated eight school gardens in Mansoura City and Talkha District, Dakahlia Governorate, Egypt. The study revealed that most school gardens contained toxic plants like weeds and cacti, and that utilized areas were not correctly used with poor maintenance. Roof gardens and improved irrigation systems were suggested.

YOUSIF ALI ABDULRAHMAN YOUSIF ALI ABDULRAHMAN · The Journal of The University of Duhok · Global

A study conducted in 2012 in Duhok city, the center of Duhok governorate, Iraq, analyzed the reality of gardens and open spaces at 10 selected high schools — the distribution of classroom, construction, concrete-square, path and allocated green space — comparing them against local and international standards through architectural plan analysis, observations and personal interviews. It found that the high schools in Duhok fail to achieve the fundamental objective of school gardens, and none had an ideal garden model. Gardens represented only 27.66% of the total site area across the ten selected schools, of which only about 52.88% was effectively utilized, leaving 47.12% unexploited without activity or vitality. Ninety percent of these schools' open spaces failed to meet international standards, and 60% remained subject only to local standards. The gardens also lacked gardening craft, with plant types, numbers and distribution left randomized.

Marjanca Kos, Janez Jerman · Problems of Education in the 21st Century · Global

A quasi-experiment with one control and one experimental group, each comprising 15 children aged 6-7, examined the effect of school gardening activities on children's knowledge of and attitude toward eating garden vegetables. Individual interviews established prior knowledge and attitudes; the experimental group then carried out activities in a school garden built in cooperation with a nearby organic farm, after which interviews were repeated in both groups. Results showed that both groups had poor general knowledge of garden vegetables at the outset, but after the garden activities the experimental group's knowledge improved to a statistically significant degree and their attitude toward eating vegetables became more positive.

Hans Schildermans, Joke Vandenabeele, Joris Vlieghe · Teoría de la Educación Revista Interuniversitaria · Global

This theoretical article proposes "study practices" as a response to Bruno Latour's question of "where to land" amid socio-ecological transformation. It analyzes the urban farming initiative Torekes as a study practice, identifying educational dynamics of composition, problematization, and attention, and contrasts this reading with sociological and political analyses that frame the initiative as aimed at social cohesion or political subjectification. The piece is a conceptual/theoretical discussion rather than an empirical study, arguing that study practices, by enabling the creation of a common world, may offer a way of living together on a damaged planet.

Jake Mowrer, Jeremy Merrill, Don Conlee, Joseph Marble, Bruce Dvorak · Journal of Living Architecture · Global

Against the backdrop of urban agriculture's potential to benefit inner-city communities by reducing food transport distance, raising awareness of food production, and improving nutrition, health, and economic status, this study grew green beans, cantaloupe, eggplant, squash, and tomatoes in a rooftop garden. The results indicate that water source quality and rooftop climatic conditions (solar-induced temperature rise) can limit the success of untrained rooftop gardeners. The study concludes that outreach and educational materials on overcoming these obstacles will be necessary to help untrained urban agriculture farmers establish productive gardens in rooftop environments.

Jair Fernando Castillo Yepes, Edward Reinaldo Pinto Ramírez · · Colombia (Bogotá)

Under an agreement between Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas and the Bogotá Botanical Garden (Jardín Botánico de Bogotá José Celestino Mutis), an internship project supported the city's urban agriculture program amid its rapid growth in Bogotá, Colombia. Using field notes, on-site observation, training sessions, and a checklist, the work identified deficiencies in the urban agriculture program and, based on these, developed an Agroecological Management Protocol for urban gardens addressing four areas derived from Good Agricultural Practices criteria: integrated crop management, good agricultural practices, environmental protection, and hazard control, aimed at diagnosing and improving conditions in gardens enrolled in the program.

Anna Maria Hipkiss, Sally Windsor, Dawn Sanders · Ethnography & Education · Global

An article that uses vignettes and photographs drawn from ethnographic research to reframe the methodological assumptions underlying school garden research. Applying Actor Network Theory and Social Semiotics to previous empirical school garden research, it develops a deeper understanding of the teaching and learning of ecoliteracy in these material contexts and highlights the affordances of school garden spaces. It also makes public the conversations of a small research group discussing a perceived ethnographic turn toward materiality, aesthetics, and agency.

Anderson C., Maher J., Wright H. · Cogent Social Sciences · Australia

Qualitative study of volunteers at a university-based community garden in Queensland, Australia, identifying enablers, barriers, and the social, educational, and career benefits relevant to sustaining institution-supported community gardens.

Pinilla K., Hoinle B., Mahecha-Groot A., Cepeda J. · International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics · Colombia (Bogotá)

This paper presents AgroEcoBogotá, an open counter-mapping platform that cartographically documented 47 urban agroecological initiatives in Bogotá to promote visibility of the local agroecology movement and foster solidarity networks between urban and peri-urban food producers.