Abstract
In the United States, interest in urban agriculture has grown dramatically. While community gardens have sprouted across the landscape, home food gardens—arguably an ever-present, more durable form of urban agriculture—have been overlooked, understudied, and unsupported by government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and academics. In part a response to the invisibility of home gardens, this paper is a manifesto for their study in the Global North. It seeks to develop a multi-scalar and multidisciplinary research framework that acknowledges the garden’s social and ecological or material dimensions. Given the lack of existing research, we draw on the more extensive literature on home gardens in the South and community gardens in the North to develop a set of hypotheses about the social-ecological effects of urban home food gardens in the North. These gardens, we hypothesize, contribute to food security, community development, cultural reproduction, and resilience at multiple scales; conserve agrobiodiversity; and support urban biodiversity. They may also have negative ecological effects, such as stormwater nutrient loading. Because of the entanglement of the social and the ecological or material in the garden, we review three theoretical perspectives—social ecological systems theory, actor-network theory, and assemblage theory—that have been or could be applied to the multi-scalar and multidisciplinary study of the garden. We also review sampling and analytic methods for conducting home garden research. The paper concludes with a discussion of opportunities to extend the research agenda beyond descriptive analysis, the primary focus of garden research to date.
Similar content being viewed by others
Abbreviations
- ANT:
-
Actor-network theory
- NGO:
-
Non-governmental organization
- RDD:
-
Random digit dialing
- SES:
-
Social-ecological system
References
Aguilar-Støen, M., S.R. Moe, and S.L. Camargo-Ricalde. 2009. Home gardens sustain crop diversity and improve farm resilience in Candelaria Loxicha, Oaxaca, Mexico. Human Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Journal 37(1): 23p. doi:10.1007/s10745-008-9197-y.
Airriess, C.A., and D.L. Clawson. 1994. Vietnamese market gardens in New Orleans. Geographical Review 84(1): 16p.
Alaimo, K., E. Packnett, R. Miles, and D. Kruger. 2008. Fruit and vegetable intake among urban community gardeners. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 40(2): 94–101. doi:10.1016/j.jneb.2006.12.003.
Anderson, B., and C. McFarlane. 2011. Assemblage and geography. Area 43(2): 124–127. doi:10.1111/J.1475-4762.2011.01004.X.
Andersson, E., S. Barthel, and K. Ahrné. 2007. Measuring social-ecological dynamics behind the generation of ecosystem services. Ecological Applications 17(5): 1267–1278.
Baker, L.E. 2004. Tending cultural landscapes and food citizenship in Toronto’s community gardens. Geographical Review 94(3): 305–325.
Barrios, E. 2007. Soil biota, ecosystem services and land productivity. Ecological Economics 64(2): 269–285.
Barthel, S., C. Folke, and J. Colding. 2010. Social-ecological memory in urban gardens-Retaining the capacity for management of ecosystem services. Global Environmental Change-Human and Policy Dimensions 20(2):255–265. doi:10.1016/J.Gloenvcha.2010.01.001.
Bassett, T.J. 1981. Reaping on the margins: A century of community gardening in America. Landscape 25(2): 8p.
Bennett, J. 2010. Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham: Duke University Press.
Beymer-Farris, B.A., T. Bassett, and I. Bryceson. 2012. Promises and pitfalls of adaptive management in resilience thinking: The lens of political ecology. In Resilience and the cultural landscape, ed. T. Plieninger, and C. Bieling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bhatti, M., and A. Church. 2001. Cultivating natures: Homes and gardens in late modernity. Sociology-the Journal of the British Sociological Association 35(2): 365–383.
Brick, J.M., D. Williams, and J.M. Montaquila. 2011. Address-based sampling for subpopulation surveys. Public Opinion Quarterly 75(3): 409–428.
Buchmann, C. 2009. Cuban home gardens and their role in social-ecological resilience. Human Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Journal 37(6): 17p. doi:10.1007/s10745-009-9283-9.
Cabalda, A.B., P. Rayco-Solon, J.A.A. Solon, and F.S. Solon. 2011. Home gardening is associated with Filipino preschool children’s dietary diversity. Journal of the American Dietetic Association 111(5): 5p. doi:10.1016/j.jada.2011.02.005.
Calvet-Mir, L., M. Calvet-Mir, J.L. Molina, and V. Reyes-García. 2012a. Seeds exchange as an agrobiodiversity conservation mechanism: A case study in Vall Fosca, Catalan Pyrenees, Iberian Peninsula. Ecology and Society 17(1): 29.
Calvet-Mir, L., E. Gomez-Baggethun, and V. Reyes-García. 2012b. Beyond food production: Ecosystem services provided by home gardens. A case study in Vall Fosca, Catalan Pyrenees, Northeastern Spain. Ecological Economics 74(153–160): 2011. doi:10.1016/J.Ecolecon.12.011.
Chevalier, S. 1998. From woolen carpet to grass carpet: Bridging house and garden in an English suburb. In Material cultures: Why some things matter, ed. D. Miller, 47–71. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
City of Chicago. 2013. Urban agriculture FAQ. Accessed 26 July 2013.
Cook, E.M., S.J. Hall, and K.L. Larson. 2012. Residential landscapes as social-ecological systems: A synthesis of multi-scalar interactions between people and their home environment. Urban Ecosystems 15(1): 19–52.
Corlett, J.L., E.A. Dean, and L.E. Grivetti. 2003. Hmong Gardens: Botanical diversity in an urban setting. Economic Botany 57(3): 365–379.
Crouch, D., and C. Ward. 1988. The allotment: Its landscape and culture. Faber and Faber.
De Landa, M. 2006. A new philosophy of society: Assemblage theory and social complexity. New York: Continuum.
Dewaelheyns, V., A. Elsen, H. Vandendriessche, and H. Gulinck. 2013. Garden management and soil fertility in Flemish domestic gardens. Landscape and Urban Planning 116: 25–35.
Domene, E., and D. Sauri. 2007. Urbanization and class-produced natures: Vegetable gardens in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region. Geoforum 38(2): 287–298. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2006.03.004.
Drescher, A.W., R. J. Holmer, and D. L. Iaquinta. 2006. Urban homegardens and allotment gardens for sustainable livelihoods: Management strategies and institutional environments. In Tropical homegardens: A time-tested example of sustainable agroforestry, eds. B. M. Kumar, and P. K. R. Nair, 317–338. vol. 3. Dordrecht: Springer.
Ellen, R.F., and H. Harris. 2000. Introduction. In Indigenous environmental knowledge and its transformations: Critical anthropological perspectives, eds. Peter Parkes, and Alan Bicker, 1–33. vol. v 5. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic.
Ellen, R., and S. Platten. 2011. The social life of seeds: The role of networks of relationships in the dispersal and cultural selection of plant germplasm. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17(3): 563–584.
Felson, A.J., and S.T. Pickett. 2005. Designed experiments: New approaches to studying urban ecosystems. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 3(10): 549–556.
Firth, C., D. Maye, and D. Pearson. 2011. Developing “community” in community gardens. Local Environment 16(6): 555–568.
Folke, C., S.R. Carpenter, B. Walker, M. Scheffer, T. Chapin, and J. Rockstrom. 2010. Resilience thinking: Integrating resilience, adaptability and transformability. Ecology and Society 15(4): 20p. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art20/
Galluzzi, G., P. Eyzaguirre, and V. Negri. 2010. Home gardens: Neglected hotspots of agro-biodiversity and cultural diversity. Biodiversity and Conservation 19(13): 3635–3654. doi:10.1007/s10531-010-9919-5.
Gardiner, M.M., S.P. Prajzner, C.E. Burkman, S. Albro, and P.S. Grewal. 2013. Vacant land conversion to community gardens: Influences on generalist arthropod predators and biocontrol services in urban greenspaces. Urban Ecosystems. doi:10.1007/s11252-013-0303-6.
Gaskell, S.M. 1980. Gardens for the working class: Victorian practical pleasure. Victorian Studies 23(4): 479–501.
Gaynor, A. 2006. Harvest of the suburbs: An environmental history of growing food in Australian cities. Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press.
Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2006. A postcapitalist politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Gilbert, P.R. 2012. Deskilling, agrodiversity, and the seed trade: A view from contemporary British allotments. Agriculture and Human Values. doi:10.1007/s10460-012-9380-z.
Glover, T. 2004. Social capital in the lived experiences of community gardeners. Leisure Sciences 26(2): 143–162. doi:10.1080/01490400490432064.
Gottlieb, R., and A. Fisher. 1996. ‘‘First feed the face’’: Environmental justice and community food security. Antipode 28(2): 193–203.
Gray, L., P. Guzman, K.M. Glowa, and A.G. Drevno. 2013. Can home gardens scale up into movements for social change? The role of home gardens in providing food security and community change in San Jose, California. Local Environment (ahead-of-print):1–17. doi:10.1080/13549839.2013.792048.
Guitart, D., C. Pickering, and J. Byrne. 2012. Past results and future directions in urban community gardens research. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 11: 364–373.
Harris, E.M., C. Polsky, K.L. Larson, R. Garvoille, D.G. Martin, J. Brumand, and L. Ogden. 2012. Heterogeneity in residential yard care: Evidence from Boston, Miami, and Phoenix. Human Ecology. doi:10.1007/s10745-012-9514-3.
Head, L., P. Muir, and E. Hampel. 2004. Australian backyard gardens and the journey of migration. Geographical Review 94(3): 22p.
Hinz, G. 2013. Farmer Emanuel expands his turf. http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130315/BLOGS02/130319836/farmer-emanuel-expands-his-turf. Accessed 26 July 2013.
Hitchings, R. 2003. People, plants and performance: On actor network theory and the material pleasures of the private garden. Social & Cultural Geography 4(1): 99–113. doi:10.1080/1464936032000049333.
Holland, L. 2004. Diversity and connections in community gardens: A contribution to local sustainability. Local Environment 9(3): 285–305. doi:10.1080/1354983042000219388.
Holling, C.S. 1973. Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4: 1–23.
Holloway, L. 2002. Smallholding, hobby-farming, and commercial farming: Ethical identities and the production of farming spaces. Environment and Planning A 34(11): 2055–2070.
Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. 2010. Cultivating questions for a sociology of gardens. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 39(5): 19p. doi:10.1177/0891241610376069.
Howard, P.L. 2004. Gender and social dynamics in swidden and homegardens in Latin America. In Tropical homegardens, ed. B.M. Kumar, and P. Nair. Dordrecht: Springer.
Jamison, M.S. 1986. The joys of gardening: Collectivist and bureaucratic cultures in conflict. Sociological Quarterly 26(4): 18p.
Kantor, L.S. 2001. Community food security programs improve food access. FoodReview 24(1): 7p.
Kingsley, J.Y., and M. Townsend. 2006. ‘Dig in’ to social capital: Community gardens as mechanisms for growing urban social connectedness. Urban Policy & Research 24(4): 13p. doi:10.1080/08111140601035200.
Kortright, R., and S. Wakefield. 2011. Edible backyards: A qualitative study of household food growing and its contributions to food security. Agriculture and Human Values 28(1): 39–53. doi:10.1007/S10460-009-9254-1.
Kumar, B.M., and P.K.R. Nair. 2004. The enigma of tropical homegardens. Agroforestry Systems 61–2(1): 135–152.
Lansu, M. 2012. NATO summit cash to fund vegetable gardens at 60 city schools. http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/17055522-418/nato-summit-cash-to-fund-vegetable-gardens-at-60-city-schools.html. Accessed 25 July 2013.
Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Clarendon lectures in management studies. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lavelle, P., T. Decaëns, M. Aubert, S. Barot, M. Blouin, F. Bureau, P. Margerie, P. Mora, and J.-P. Rossi. 2006. Soil invertebrates and ecosystem services. European Journal of Soil Biology 42: S3–S15.
Lawson, L.J. 2005. City bountiful: A century of community gardening in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Loram, A., K. Thompson, P.H. Warren, and K.J. Gaston. 2008. Urban domestic gardens (XII): The richness and composition of the flora in five UK cities. Journal of Vegetation Science 19(3): 321–330.
Maron, J., and M. Marler. 2007. Native plant diversity resists invasion at both low and high resource levels. Ecology 88(10): 2651–2661. doi:10.1890/06-1993.1.
Matteson, K.C., J.S. Ascher, and G.A. Langellotto. 2008. Bee richness and abundance in New York City urban gardens. Annals of the Entomological Society of America 101(1): 140–150. doi:10.1603/0013-8746(2008)101[140:BRAAIN]2.0.CO;2.
Mazumdar, S. 2012. Immigrant home gardens: Places of religion, culture, ecology, and family. Landscape and Urban Planning 105(3): 258–265.
McCubbin, L.D., and H.I. McCubbin. 2005. Culture and ethnic identity in family reslience. In Handbook for working with children and youth: Pathways to resilience across cultures and contexts, ed. Michael Ungar, xxxix, 511 p. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Méndez, V., R. Lok, and E. Somarriba. 2001. Interdisciplinary analysis of homegardens in Nicaragua: Micro-zonation, plant use and socioeconomic importance. Agroforestry Systems 51(2): 85–96. doi:10.1023/a:1010622430223.
Moore, S. 2006. Forgotten roots of the green city: Subsistence gardening in Columbus, Ohio, 1900–1940. Urban Geography 27(2): 174–192.
Morton, L., E. Bitto, M. Oakland, and M. Sand. 2008. Accessing food resources: Rural and urban patterns of giving and getting food. Agriculture and Human Values 25(1): 107–119. doi:10.1007/s10460-007-9095-8.
Nair, P.K.R. 2006. Whither homegardens? In Tropical homegardens: A time-tested example of sustainable agroforestry, ed. B.M. Kumar, and P.K.R. Nair. Dordrecht: Springer.
Nazarea, V.D. 1998. Cultural memory and biodiversity. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Nazarea, V.D. 2005. Heirloom seeds and their keepers: Marginality and memory in the conservation of biological diversity. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Parry, D., T. Glover, and K. Shinew. 2005. ‘Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow? Examining gender roles and relations in community gardens. Leisure Studies 24(2): 177–192. doi:10.1080/0261436052000308820.
Pawelek, J.E.A. 2009. Modification of a community garden to attract native bee pollinators in urban San Luis Obispo, California. Cities and the Environment 2(1): 7p.
Power, E.R. 2005. Human-nature relations in suburban gardens. Australian Geographer 36(1): 39–53. doi:10.1080/00049180500050847.
Pudup, M. 2008. It takes a garden: Cultivating citizen-subjects in organized garden projects. Geoforum 39(3): 1228–1240. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.06.012.
Punja, A. 2009. Cultivating just planning and legal institutions: A critical assessment of the South Central Farm struggle in Los Angeles. Journal of Urban Affairs 31(1): 23p. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9906.2008.00426.x.
Reyes-García, V., S. Vila, L. Aceituno-Mata, L. Calvet-Mir, T. Garnatje, A. Jesch, J.J. Lastra, et al. 2010. Gendered homegardens: A study in three mountain areas of the Iberian Peninsula. Economic Botany 64(3): 235–247. doi:10.1007/S12231-010-9124-1.
Reyes-García, V., L. Calvet-Mir, S. Vila, L. Aceituno-Mata, T. Garnatje, J.J. Lastra, M. Parada, M. Rigat, J. Vallès, and M. Pardo-De-Santayana. 2013. Does crop diversification pay off? An empirical study in home gardens of the Iberian Peninsula. Society & Natural Resources 26(1): 44–59.
Robbins, P. 2007. Lawn people: How grasses, weeds, and chemicals make us who we are. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Saldivar-Tanaka, L., and M.E. Krasny. 2004. Culturing community development, neighborhood open space, and civic agriculture: The case of Latino community gardens in New York City. Agriculture and Human Values 21(4): 399–412.
Schmelzkopf, K. 2002. Incommensurability, land use, and the right to space: Community gardens in New York City. Urban Geography 23(4): 323–343.
Schupp, J.L., and J.S. Sharp. 2012. Exploring the social bases of home gardening. Agriculture and Human Values 29(1): 93–105.
Shinew, K.J., T.D. Glover, and D.C. Parry. 2004. Leisure spaces as potential sites for interracial interaction: Community gardens in urban areas. Journal of Leisure Research 36(3): 336–355.
Smith, V.M., R.B. Greene, and J. Silbernagel. 2013. The social and spatial dynamics of community food production: A landscape approach to policy and program development. Landscape Ecology 28(7): 1415–1426.
Smith, C.M., and H.E. Kurtz. 2003. Community gardens and politics of scale in New York City. Geographical Review 93(2): 20p.
Sperling, L., J.A. Ashby, M.E. Smith, E. Weltzien, and S. McGuire. 2001. A framework for analyzing participatory plant breeding approaches and results. Euphytica 122(3): 439–450. doi:10.1023/a:1017505323730.
Staeheli, L.A., D. Mitchell, and K. Gibson. 2002. Conflicting rights to the city in New York’s community gardens. GeoJournal 58(2–3): 197–205.
Taylor, J.R., and S.T. Lovell. 2012. Mapping public and private spaces of urban agriculture in Chicago through the analysis of high-resolution aerial images in Google Earth. Landscape and Urban Planning 108(1): 57–70. doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2012.08.001.
Tidball, K.G., and M.E. Krasny. 2007. From risk to resilience: What role for community greening and civic ecology in cities? In Social learning: Towards a sustainable world, ed. A.E.J. Wals. Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers.
Tucker, D.M. 1993. Kitchen gardening in America: A history. Ames: Iowa State University Press.
Turner, M. 2009. Ecology: Natural and political. In A companion to environmental geography, eds. N. Castree, D. Demeritt, D. Liverman, and B. Rhoads. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
Twiss, J., J. Dickinson, S. Duma, T. Kleinman, H. Paulsen, and L. Rilveria. 2003. Community gardens: Lessons learned from California healthy cities and communities. American Journal of Public Health 93(9): 1435–1438.
Vitiello, D., and M. Nairn. 2009. Community gardening in Philadelphia: 2008 harvest report. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Planning and Urban Studies.
Vogl, C.R., B. Vogl-Lukasser, and R.K. Puri. 2004. Tools and methods for data collection in ethnobotanical studies of homegardens. Field methods 16(3): 285–306.
White, M.M. 2011. Sisters of the soil: Urban gardening as resistance in Detroit. Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 5(1): 13–28.
WinklerPrins, A.M.G.A. 2002. House-lot gardens in Santarem-Para, Brazil: Linking rural with urban. Urban Ecosystems 6(1): 43–65. doi:10.1023/a:1025914629492.
Witzling, L., M. Wander, and E. Phillips. 2011. Testing and educating on urban soil lead: A case of Chicago community gardens. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development 1(2): 167–185.
Wortman, S.E., and S.T. Lovell. 2013. Environmental challenges threatening the growth of urban agriculture in the United States. Journal of Environmental Quality 42(5): 1283–1294.
Yadav, P., K. Duckworth, and P.S. Grewal. 2012. Habitat structure influences below ground biocontrol services: A comparison between urban gardens and vacant lots. Landscape and Urban Planning 104(2): 238–244.
Zypchyn, K. 2012. Getting back to the garden: Reflections on gendered behaviours in home gardening. Earth Common Journal 2(1): 19p.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Taylor, J.R., Lovell, S.T. Urban home food gardens in the Global North: research traditions and future directions. Agric Hum Values 31, 285–305 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-013-9475-1
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-013-9475-1