What are community gardens: features and benefits
Lo community gardens or social consists of a collection of urban plots for growing horticultural plants and is based on organic farming. Their work results largely from operating agreements entered into by local authorities with one or more people. This garden is characterized by common areas, thanks to which all project participants have access to a range of social infrastructure (services, roads, etc.) that facilitate agricultural work.
In this article, we will tell you what community gardens are, their characteristics and benefits for society.
What are community gardens and what are their functions?
There are 5 main functions fulfilled by a community garden:
- Urban planning: Transform degraded or abandoned spaces into usable spaces and improve the urban landscape by adding more green space per block or area.
- Environment: They act as filters to prevent pollution, act as lungs and improve air quality with pure oxygen.
- Treatment: Growing outdoors offers many health and well-being benefits because it helps eliminate stress and involves moderate physical activity.
- Socialization: Community gardens are a great opportunity for shared activities, whether for family, therapeutic, educational purposes or simply as a hobby.
- Culture: Thanks to work in agriculture, traditions related to rural and local knowledge are maintained and renewed through learning and the activities of fresh actors.
Classification of community gardens
This classification can include more examples, each project can highlight as many common goals as possible (scientific, commercial, etc.), and the name of each orchard will vary depending on the geographical area. The most popular orchards are:
- Garden with its own supplies: As the name suggests, the main function is to provide food to those responsible for the crops so that they can be self-sufficient.
- Educational gardens: Thanks to its teaching functions, it can be used for learning at school, in a university environment or with older people. They are located inside the center and on the external plot.
- Medicinal orchards: They support people with some degree of disability or disability, mental problems, drug addiction, etc. They depend on social welfare programs.
- Recreational gardens: They are fun in nature, so they are a hobby for participants who engage in agricultural tasks in their free time, most often during holidays.
Faced with the stress of everyday life and work, a community garden becomes a space where we can share the resources that the earth offers us with others.
Sowing ways of living in the city
A socially just and sustainable future means an urgent renewal of eco-cities, in which urban agriculture must play a strategic role. One is the relationship between human settlements and the agricultural lands surrounding them the main factors defining human society. Historically, cities relied on agriculture until industrialization accelerated, and access to plentiful and budget-friendly energy enabled further urbanization, long-distance transportation, and the expansion of world markets.
The rise of industrial cities fostered a fictitious independence from locally produced food and seasonal supplies, contributing to the gradual degradation and alienation of agricultural spaces. Mirages, economic and energy crises and excessive load capacity the planets are starting to be questioned. A socially just and sustainable future means an urgent renewal of eco-cities, in which urban agriculture must play a strategic role.
Services
In recent years, urban community gardens have undergone a real revolution in cities around the world for a variety of reasons, although they show a greater awareness of the need to continue to act sustainably and understand the origins and quality of the food we eat. They are eaten. This trend has borne fruit 15% of the world’s food now comes from crops grown in urban areaswhether in gardens, on roofs, in vast squares in open spaces or in empty plots.
In fact, these initiatives make a positive contribution to society, especially so-called community urban gardens. From promoting healthier and more conscious communities to reducing the so-called heat island effect – here we present 10 advantages of urban community gardens:
- It facilitates access to fresh and high-quality foodsuch as fruits and vegetables, to improve quality of life and health.
- Promotes a better neighborhood social environment by allowing Allow neighbors to interact and get to know each other. Encourage the development of community identity.
- They enable the integration of groups such as the elderly and immigrants, who find here recreational activities that keep them busy and allow them to socialize with other age or cultural groups.
- Promotes better mental health helping to fight stress.
- They act as educational centers, especially for children, about responsibility, sustainable development, care for the environment and appreciating the effort put into growing one’s own food.
- Community gardens also support reduce the impact of the so-called “heat islands”. The thermal inertia of the water present in the plants and the field itself allows the orchard to absorb heat, thus limiting temperature fluctuations.
- They become urban shelters for other animals, like pollinators.
- It can lower food bills and serve as a food support system for low-income families.
- It increases a community’s sense of belonging and helps them save, reappraise and properly utilize empty lots that would otherwise become littered.
- Aid reduce organic waste in your community by using it as compost.
Local communities promoting community gardens organize to revitalize degraded urban spaces on a miniature scale, through modest reconstruction of areas, emphasizing the utility value of urban spaces and relational revalorization aimed at restoring the quality of space by strengthening social relations (development of events such as popular festivals, restaurants or cultural initiatives).
These micro-urban practices express differences of opinion about the dominant model of the city and the way of life it generates. Community gardens express a variety of sensitivities, needs and demands at the local level (environmental, neighborhood, political, relational…) while initiating the process of self-government at the neighborhood levelemphasizing direct participation, taking up space, renewal of identity and collective co-responsibility of the community for the various matters that concern them.
I hope this information helps you learn more about community gardens and their features.