Urban Perennials: How Diversification has Created a Sustainable Community Garden Movement in The United States

Abstract

Our research seeks to understand how the contemporary community garden movement in the United States differs from its predecessors and whether its new foundation increases the political and financial sustainability of today's gardens. To this end, this article reviews historical and contemporary literature, and surveys participants in three distinctive community gardens, to answer several related research questions. First, what is the current state of the US community garden movement, and how have its historical roots shaped its response to current policy concerns? Second, which populations comprise today's community gardeners, and what motivates them to participate? After considering the findings from our three study gardens, and from a review of secondary and “gray” literature, we conclude by positing that a greater diversity of gardeners and gardening motivations, accompanied by changing leading views on urban land uses, will lead to such urban gardens remaining a more lasting feature of city neighborhood landscapes.

Key words:

• community gardens
• sustainability
• history
• urban
• agriculture.

Notes

²For good definitions of community gardening, see Ferris et al. (2001). Some literature, e.g., Colasanti et al. (2012), uses the term “urban agriculture” to describe similar efforts.