Re: Do Community Gardens Build Community?

**l*@attglobal.net**

Hi Keisha,

I was looking through my little pile of studies for something helpful,
and these might be:

A Dietary, Social and Economic Evaluation of the Philadelphia Urban
Greening Project,
Dorothy Blair, Carol C. Giesecke, and Sandra Sherman
in Journal of Nutrition Education, July/Aug 1991 v 23(4) p 161-167
[reports that gardeners were more likely to participate in other
activities, but consider Adam's caveat about which comes first]

Cross-Cultural Community Development in the Ethnically Diverse Community
Gardens of San Jose California,
John Dotter,
in The Healing Dimensions of People-Plant Relationships, A Research
Symposium, March 24-27, 1994, UC Davis
[reports the community-development experiences of gardeners, although
mainly as relates to the gardens]

Ishwarbhai C. Patel of Rutgers Cooperative Extension has done a slew of
papers on various benefits of comm gardens.

Hey, I figure eventually all my years in school have gotta help
*somebody*.
Good luck,
Lisa

Keisha Payson wrote:

Hello Community Gardeners,
I am doing a research paper for a class on Sustainable Communities.  The
research question I have posed is a big one - do community gardens build
community, and if so, are there certain elements or aspects of a CG that
help to foster this community.  I have been doing interviews of
gardeners here in Maine and all is going well.  But I have a question of
the larger CG community out there - do any of you have stories you could
share about instances where members of a community garden have gotten
together to work on a different issue in their neighborhood based on
their relationships established through the community garden.  (i.e.
community gardening
members organizing together to work on issues like crime, a political
event, a school issue, a landlord issue) I would appreciate any stories
you might have.
Thanks!

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