Research & reports

C. Clare Hinrichs, Kathy S. Kremer · Journal of Poverty · United States

This 1997 case study examined a Midwest community supported agriculture (CSA) project that aimed to increase low-income participation through financial subsidies, using a telephone survey of 41 member-households. The study found that while subsidized households had lower incomes, the overall CSA sample was more advantaged in income, occupation, and education compared to local populations. The project inadvertently served the "advantaged" poor, indicating that social inclusion efforts in local food systems may not effectively reach the most vulnerable.

Cindy Rosenthal · TDR/The Drama Review · United States (New York City)

In New York City, a group of NYU students and local community activists protested and performed against landlords and the city bulldozing community gardens. Their performance piece documented the transformation of garbage-strewn lots into lush, vital community havens and cried out against their destruction. This highlights a conflict over urban garden governance.

L. Hughes · Journal of Extension · United States

Rutgers Cooperative Extension developed "From Our Farms," a nutrition and agriculture education program for children aged 3-8 in the United States. This initiative promotes improved nutrition and consumption of locally grown foods through family-based activities offered via local libraries.

Jeff Sharp, Eric Imerman, Greg Peters · Journal of Extension · United States

This qualitative study of a Midwestern Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program explored how CSA builds connections between farmers and non-farmers. The findings indicate that CSA successfully met participant goals while fostering community among these groups. The study suggests that CSA can be promoted at the rural-urban interface to strengthen community and support local agriculture.

Manon Boulianne · Anthropologica · Mexico

A study on community organizations and urban agriculture in Mexico City and Cuernavaca suggests that the very meaning of participation becomes an issue for community organizations engaged in popular entrepreneurship development programs. It illustrates how the structuring effects of market production activities lead to a renegotiation of the meaning attributed to participation among the individuals and groups concerned.

Feng We · · United States

This article details the landscape philosophy of Karl Linn, a landscape architect, through his project practices. It discusses the inevitability and importance of establishing a citywide system for environmental self-help, which is common in US community gardens.

Regina Day Langhout, Julian Rappaport, Doretha Simmons · Urban Education · United States

This article addresses tensions in facilitating the relationship between teachers and community members while working on a community garden project. The authors adopt an ecological model for effective classroom-community collaboration and discuss how this process unfolded in their setting, presenting two classroom projects as examples of culturally relevant classroom-community collaboration. The garden project is evaluated using classroom-community collaboration models, including a discussion of teachers' and community members' shared and differing goals and how those differences were navigated in practice.

Maki Kawasi · University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy (University of Minnesota) · United States

A report conducted on behalf of the Phillips Neighborhood Network and Phillips ETC (Environment-Transportation-Community), supported by the Neighborhood Planning for Community Revitalization program at the University of Minnesota's Center for Urban and Regional Affairs. The available abstract states only this administrative context, with no described method or findings.

Mark Francis · Landscape Journal · United States (California)

Village Homes in California, United States, designed and developed by Michael and Judy Corbett in the 1970s, is a widely cited example of sustainable community design and landscape architecture, consisting of 242 single- and multi-family residences on sixty acres. Homes are planned as energy-conserving buildings arranged around common open space with play areas and shared gardens, and a sizable portion of the development is devoted to community open space, including orchards and vineyards, managed largely as edible landscape by residents themselves. Initially viewed by local planners and bankers as high-risk, the development is today one of the most desirable and economically successful in California. Following the Landscape Architecture Foundation's case-study format, the paper offers a critical review of the project's successes and limitations.

John Ferris, Carol Norman, Joe Sempik · Social Policy and Administration · USA

This article reports on research and experience from the USA regarding community gardens and their role in the social dimension of sustainable development. It explores how the use of urban green spaces for gardens links to health, education, community development, and food security. The article concludes that using urban open spaces for parks and gardens is closely associated with environmental justice and equity.

Sarah Edwards · The English Journal · United States

This article describes how the author's eighth-grade language arts inquiry-based instruction evolved into student-based community learning. Students brought the community to school with an art exhibit on tolerance, volunteered at a nearby elementary school, created community gardens to fulfill a neighborhood need, and established a new desert habitat community park, connecting the school and neighborhood.

Shira Brynjegard · Dominican Scholar (Dominican University of California) · United States

This study explored the reasons for gardens and natural spaces on school campuses and their effects on students. Blending case studies, observational data, and personal experience, it discussed the impacts of a garden on participating students, using the balance of administrative, teacher, parent, and student involvement to determine lasting effects on student attitudes toward environmental concerns. Evidence of increased environmental awareness in students was discussed.

Hilda E. Kurtz · Urban Geography · United States (Minneapolis)

This paper examines the variations among community gardens in Minneapolis, Minnesota, suggesting they reflect differing interpretations of "community" and "garden" in urban settings. While community gardens are seen as responses to urban decay, the study highlights that issues of enclosure, inclusion, and exclusion are central to their function. Decisions regarding garden enclosure shape their role in urban neighborhoods, indicating potential limitations related to equity.

Huei-Hsuan Lin · Syracuse University Libraries (Syracuse University) · United States

This three-year qualitative study of an urban community garden in a mid-size city in upstate New York, United States, examined how women community gardeners perceive their participation. It found that the community garden, intended as a space for social change, paradoxically became a site of internal struggles among participants. Emancipatory efforts to build a less unequal society did not automatically result in an egalitarian space, as the process of community building by individuals with various social positions required arduous efforts and involved negotiation and confrontations, rather than simple unity.

Elizabeth Lynn Waddell · CSUSB ScholarWorks (California State University, San Bernardino) · United States (California)

This project was developed to encourage educators to establish school site gardens. These gardens offer opportunities to introduce environmental topics and function as hands-on learning centers for various subjects.

Laurie Thorp, Christine D. Townsend · · United States

An ethnographic case study of an agricultural-education garden-based curriculum at an elementary school in the Midwestern United States, seeking a phenomenological understanding of its impact on students and teachers. Data were collected through participant observation, dialogue, interviews, photo elicitation and student work, and analyzed using Lincoln and Guba's constant comparative method. Findings were that the garden: (1) reshapes school culture; (2) serves as a leverage point reversing loss of time, control and place; (3) connects students to experience as an organizing principle; (4) becomes a site for student and teacher self-expression, creativity and innovation; and (5) shifts food's status from a consumable commodity to a portal for communal good.

Melford Mj W. Gunderson · UND Scholarly Commons (University of North Dakota) · United States

A study of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and the community of Elbowoods, North Dakota (2001) describes the social disorganization and community upheaval inflicted on Native Americans by the 1954 construction of the Garrison Dam by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Flooding of thousands of acres stripped Elbowoods residents of farmland, natural shelter for people and cattle, family structure, community gardens, and a way of life that had existed for thousands of years. Drawing primarily on interviews with ten former Elbowoods residents, supplemented by newspapers, published reports, photographs, video, and congressional records, and framed through social disorganization and community theory, the study documents that the dam's construction and the resulting relocation devastated the community and forced residents to cope with and adapt to a "loss of community."

Sonja M. Skelly, Jennifer Bradley · HortTechnology · United States (Florida)

A Fall 1997 questionnaire for elementary school teachers participating in a Florida school garden competition found that teachers used school gardens infrequently, with most using them as an instructional tool no more than 10% of the time. However, 97.1% used them for environmental education, 72.9% for experiential learning, and 84.3% reported enhanced student learning. The surveyed teachers had relatively new gardens and lacked or were unaware of educational resources.

Susan Andreatta · Culture & Agriculture · United States

This paper describes marketing opportunities for small-scale, limited-resource organic producers in Central North Carolina, United States. It examines farmers' markets and community-supported agriculture programs, highlighting how growers advocate and educate consumers about local agriculture. The study discusses the increasing demand for local organic food and strategies for growers to enhance community support, suggesting that alternative production and niche marketing could help sustain small-scale growers amidst farm loss and declining conventional agricultural prices.

William Ted Johnson · Electronic Green Journal · North America

This is a review of Thomas Leo Ogren's book "Allergy-Free Gardening: The Revolutionary Guide to Healthy Landscaping" (2000). The reviewer notes that while the book attempts to quantify plant allergy potential, it overstates the case against many common North American garden species. Ogren's OPALS system for allergy classification considers various factors but lacks a clear explanation of how these factors combine into a single score, suggesting a reliance on subjective estimation rather than scientific objectivity. The book's focus on planting only female plants to achieve an "allergy-free" garden is criticized for undermining efforts to consider the holistic value of native plantscapes.

Andres Dasso, Teobaldo Pinzas · · Peru

In Lima, Peru, a city with an infertile sandy environment and 0.0 mm average rainfall, urban agriculture has been implemented since the late 1980s to improve the living conditions of the resource-poor urban population. This initiative addresses the rapid urban growth experienced by Lima between the 1950s and 1990s, primarily due to migration.

Joshua J. Cousins · · United States (Oregon)

This qualitative study examined local food networks in Washington County, Oregon, focusing on small-scale agricultural landscapes and farmers selling through farmers markets or CSAs. It explored farmers' concerns about urbanization, farmland preservation, and their difficulties participating in local food networks. The research concluded that local food sold through alternative venues can help preserve and develop specific farm sites.

Donna Armstrong · The Science of Diabetes Self-Management and Care · United States

This study aimed to design a culturally appropriate diabetes education program for a Northwest American Indian tribe. A community-based intervention, including workshops on health themes and a community garden, was designed to address multiple barriers to diabetes care. However, prior to the implementation of the community workshops and evaluations, the tribal government chose to discontinue receiving federal funding for this project.

Barbara Shields · · United States (Portland)

This study examined the social and physical connections and images that define the sense of place in three community gardens managed by the City of Portland, United States. Thirty gardeners participated, using a narrative photo storytelling method to express their connections to space and experiences of empowerment through community gardening. The study proposes the concept of the Natural Realm, where community gardeners experience empowerment by perceiving gardens as sacred places for growing healthy food, practicing green domesticity, and learning from nature in a beautiful setting. Gardeners achieve most of their empowerment goals through solitary efforts to maximize pleasurable activities and increase personal efficacy and satisfaction.

Claire Bach · · Canada (Montreal)

A case study of informal citizen-led urban agriculture projects in Montreal, Canada, focuses on the dynamics surrounding their establishment and complex structure. While often initiated by citizen groups, other actors, including non-profit organizations, municipal officials, or business owners, are also involved. This research demonstrates that collective urban agriculture projects exist simultaneously as a political practice that might not significantly alter the existing spatial and social orders.