What are Community Gardens?
"Community gardens are places where people come together to grow food and community"1. They come in all shapes and sizes; every garden has its own unique culture or ‘flavour’ that relates to the nature of the land it’s on, the people involved in the garden and the community that surrounds it.
There are two main styles of community gardens – communal or shared gardens (where people garden collectively and share any produce) and allotment gardens (where people pay a fee to 'lease' their own plot of land to garden). Many gardens combine the two.
As well as edible plantings, community gardens often include native gardens and decorative and therapeutic elements. Whilst gardening is a focus, community gardens are generally multi-purpose community hubs for a range of activities including education and training, playgroups, arts and creative activities, preparing and sharing food, community events and celebrations, and social enterprise.
The range of skill levels catered for and activities on offer, together with the ‘hands on’ nature of gardening and the universal language of food, mean that community gardens provide fabulous opportunities for cross-cultural connections and for social participation by people who find it difficult to access traditional recreation and leisure options in the community. Community gardens are also one of the few types of community facilities where you’ll commonly see people of all ages coming together and intergenerational exchange taking place.
Community gardens differ in terms of who manages them. Many gardens are self-managed by community members who participate in the garden. Some are managed by agencies or organisations for the benefit of gardeners with special needs (e.g. state government housing authorities, community services organisations and universities) and others are managed by local Councils.
Community gardens also differ in terms of the communities they are for and who can access them. Some gardens are established for a specific community (e.g. residents of a particular apartment block, retirement village or public housing estate); whilst others are set up for a specific community with the aim of building connections with the wider community (e.g. a garden open to the general public established in the grounds of a hostel for people dealing with mental illness as a way of connecting residents with the broader community). Gardens that are established for the whole community can also have differing levels of access. In some gardens, regular access is limited to members of the garden and only open to the general public at specific times; whilst others are accessible to the whole community at all times.
1 claire nettle (2010). Growing Community: Starting and nurturing community gardens. Health SA, Government of South Australia and Community and Neighbourhood Houses and Centres Association Inc.
