Research & reports

Tina M. Waliczek, J.M. Zajicek · HortScience · United States

This study initiated an environmental education garden program, "The Green Classroom," in eight schools across the Midwest and Texas, involving approximately 1000 third- through eighth-grade students. The program aimed to integrate garden activities into classroom lessons to reinforce curriculum. Researchers administered pre- and post-tests, including a psychological inventory and an environmental attitude survey, to examine the relationship between garden program participation and students' self-esteem, interpersonal relationships, attitude toward school, and environmental attitudes.

Karen Schmelzkopf · Geographical Review · United States (New York City)

This article examines community gardens in Loisaida, a high-crime, poverty-stricken area of Manhattan's Lower East Side in New York City. The gardens provide social and economic functions, serving as safe open spaces for socialization and sources of food. A major problem identified is the competition for these sites between gardening and housing development.

Laura L. Lawson · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · United States (California)

A 1995 article on the "BYA Community Garden Patch," a community garden started in 1993 by Berkeley Youth Alternatives (BYA) on a half-acre former railroad right-of-way in West Berkeley, California, US. The garden — which includes a children's garden, demonstration garden, outdoor classroom, compost area, and entrepreneurial youth garden — was planned through bilingual design workshops involving teens, their parents, neighbors, BYA board members, and city officials. BYA employs and trains 10 teens in park landscape maintenance at the site.

Laura Lawson, Marcia J. McNally · · United States (California)

A paper proposing new methods for layering utility and maximizing benefit to teens and the community by including teens' needs in the planning and maintenance of urban open space. It discusses two programs run by Berkeley Youth Alternatives (BYA)—the BYA Youth Employment Landscape Program and the BYA Community Garden Patch—that attract youth through employment, providing at-risk teens with income, job training, safe after-school activity, and self-esteem, presenting program descriptions and evaluation to inform future similar projects.

William C. Olien, Joe G. Harper, Katherine Ashe · HortScience · United States

A Teaching Fruit-Garden Project paired Horticulture and Agricultural Education classes at a US university (1995) to build teaching materials for college courses, area K-12 schools, and community members interested in fruit and edible landscaping, organized around team coordination, writing across the curriculum, and hands-on learning. The horticulture course produced a proposal for low-maintenance, sustainable fruit production including species and cultivar choices, a management plan, and a preliminary site plan; the agriculture education course produced self-contained teaching modules with sample lesson plans for K-12 teachers. Students reported liking the cross-class collaboration and the sense that their work served the community.

Ishwarbhai C. Patel · HortTechnology · United States

The Rutgers Urban Gardening (RUG) program in the United States fosters cultural diversity by employing six ethnic minority workers and reaching over 30 ethnic groups through various educational programs. It creates an environment where people can connect, share concerns, and solve problems, bridging social, economic, cultural, and racial barriers.

William T. Hlubik, Michael W. Hamm · HortScience · United States

A 1994 conference presentation abstract (HortScience) describing the need for a comprehensive model to measure the impact of community gardening on the physical, nutritional and sociological structures of at-risk urban communities in the United States, and reporting on the stepwise development and implementation of an evaluation tool built to address that need. Developed in partnership with horticultural researchers, urban gardeners, dietitians and sociologists, the tool integrates established evaluative methods with new measurement techniques into a statistical survey. Preliminary findings from the first year of survey administration were to be shared at the presentation, but no specific results are given in the abstract itself.

Mark Francis, Randolph T. Hester · · United States

This publication is a collection of essays exploring the multifaceted meanings of gardens. It examines gardens through the lenses of metaphor, power, ordering, cultural expression, personal expression, and healing. Each section features various authors discussing how gardens relate to faith, social structures, design, community, individual experience, and well-being.

Rakodi C. · The Journal of Modern African Studies · Zambia (Lusaka)

A field-based study of Zambian urban settlements in the 1970s-1980s, finding that urban cultivation serves as a vital survival strategy for low-income households and warrants integration into urban development planning.

Williams, Patrick Neal. · K-State Research Exchange (Kansas State University) · United States (Manhattan, Kansas)

A five-month study of children gardening in the Manhattan Community Garden, Manhattan, Kansas, investigated differences in self-esteem, horticultural knowledge, and garden quality. Children without other siblings gardening showed higher self-esteem, gained more horticultural knowledge, and had better appearing gardens than children with other siblings gardening.

W.P. Holtz, H.J. Mooy · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · United States

A 1982 final report presenting the design and construction of a community greenhouse in Newark, New Jersey, United States. It includes photographs and drawings of the greenhouse construction along with a demonstration of budgeting information.

Earle Barnhart · Birkhäuser Basel eBooks · United States

This paper argues that producing food within a forest ecosystem through careful cultivation of tree crops on hilly, marginal land is a successful and sustainable strategy for conserving soil and nutrients, and holds potential for the northeastern United States, where natural vegetation is predominantly steep, hilly forest unsuited to normal food production. Drawing on forest farming development at the New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, it discusses concepts of ecology, energy use and erosion control in agricultural ecosystems.

Ledogar Rj · PubMed · Zambia (Lusaka)

In 1978, a pilot project was initiated in Lusaka, Zambia, by UNICEF and The American Friends Service Committee to expand urban agriculture. This project aims to establish kitchen gardens on residential plots, cultivate road reserves and green belts, utilize idle land during the rainy season, raise small livestock, promote cooperative cultivation of small holdings in the urban periphery by low-income residents, and eventually resettle some urban residents on farms. The goal is for the service to be self-supporting by 1980.

M. A. Latheef, R.D. Irwin · The Canadian Entomologist · United States

A paper on field experiments conducted in southside Virginia, United States, sought to quantify the effect of companion plants (repellent herbs) on major lepidopteran pests of cabbage. It cites an estimated 33 million home and community gardens grown in the United States during 1976 and 1977 as context, noting that claims about companionate planting's protective effects made by organic growers had little field evidence to substantiate them. The abstract does not report the experiment's specific results.

M. Klein, M. Smith · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · United States

This bibliography lists pamphlets and newsletters related to organizing community gardens in the United States. It includes resources such as "Community Garden Handbook," "Guide to Community Garden Organization," and "Profiles of California Community Garden Projects." The bibliography also references the 1977 Gallup Poll results on gardening in America.

Steven L. Doud, Greg Pagano · HortScience · United States

Many American urban dwellers are rediscovering that gardens can provide inexpensive, high-quality food, recreation, and relaxation. This "green thumb boom" is particularly evident in the emergence of community garden projects in college communities, where students seek to supplement incomes and work with plants. While these projects vary in management philosophy and workload allocation, they share common goals of abundant food production and enjoyment for gardeners.

Clifford W. Scherer · Journal of Applied Communications · United States

A 1970 article situates the traditional rural orientation of agricultural extension audiences historically, noting that 66% of the U.S. population was rural when the land-grant colleges were established, and that more than a quarter of the population still lived on farms 52 years later when the Smith-Lever Act created the Cooperative Extension Service. The abstract text provided contains only this historical background and no specific findings about the actual use of radio public service announcements for urban agriculture.

Eva C. Worden, Adrian Hunsberger, John McLaughlin · EDIS · United States (Florida)

This publication was developed to assist those who wish to form a community garden in Florida. A community garden is a collaborative greenspace where participants share in both maintenance and rewards. This document is part of a series from the Environmental Horticulture Department at the University of Florida.

Mickie E. Swisher, Rose Koenig, Jennifer Gove, James A. Sterns · EDIS · United States (Florida)

This bulletin from the University of Florida explains the concept of a consumer-supported farm (Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA). CSA is a production method where consumers directly partner with farmers to secure their own food production, and this bulletin describes the steps required to develop such a partnership.

Eva C. Worden · EDIS · United States

Landscaping in urban settings is described as offering a significant opportunity to contribute to sustainability, with edible landscaping — landscapes that incorporate plant species for human consumption — cited as one such opportunity. This document, ENH971, is part of a series from the Environmental Horticulture Department, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, originally published in May 2004.

Lydia Elzey · The American Biology Teacher · United States

This record is a research article titled "An Elementary School Garden Project" by Lydia Elzey, published in The American Biology Teacher in 1944. The abstract provides only publication details and states that the content is only available via PDF, with no further information about the project itself.

Earl R. Gabler · The Clearing House A Journal of Educational Strategies Issues and Ideas · United States

A 1942 article in The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas (Vol. 16, No. 8, pp. 469-472) titled "School Gardens for Victory"; the available record provides only this bibliographic citation, with no further abstract content.

John Ihlder · National Municipal Review · United States (New York City)

This abstract, from "Lectures on housing" (1914), describes various activities initiated by public schools, including normal schools, kindergartens, evening schools, trade schools, vacation schools, playgrounds, and school gardens. It also mentions music, drawing, manual training, household arts, physical training, medical inspection, school nurses, special classes for children with disabilities, visiting teachers, and school lunches. Part 2 of the primer summarizes the aims and activities of the New York association.

John Ihlder · National Municipal Review · United States (New York City)

This 1914 item is a short notice of Robert Ellis Thompson's book 'The History of the Delling-House and Its Future,' priced at $1.00, appended to a summary of New York public-school activities including normal schools, kindergartens, evening and trade schools, vacation schools, playgrounds, school gardens, music, drawing, manual training, household arts, physical training, medical inspection, school nurses, classes for disabled children, visiting teachers and school lunches.

Nina Leubrie · The Elementary School Teacher · United States

In October, upon the school's opening, many flowers were still blooming in "Grandmother's Garden" at Lincoln Park. The children desired to plant hollyhocks, hardy chrysanthemums, and bright autumn flowers in front of their building, but it was determined to be too late for fall flowers. Consequently, it was decided that spring flowers would be planted using bulbs, for which catalogues were obtained, and pictures and descriptions were studied.