Greener growing: assessing the influence of gardening practices on the ecological viability of community gardens in South East Queensland, Australia

Abstract

While claims about the environmental benefits of community gardens abound, few researchers have systematically assessed the ecological integrity of gardening practices. This study investigated gardening practices in 50 community gardens in Brisbane and Gold Coast cities, Australia. The study aimed to better understand how gardening practices might affect the ecological viability of community gardens. Factors investigated included: garden bio-physical characteristics, operators’ motivations, gardeners’ socio-demographic backgrounds, garden facilities and types of plants grown. Two broad types of gardens were identified: permaculture (21 gardens) and non-permaculture (29 gardens). Permaculture gardens used lower-impact gardening practices. Findings have policy implications for environmental planning and management.

Keywords:

• food production
• urban agriculture
• motivations
• benefits
• sustainability
• ecology

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers and editor for their advice and comments. They have substantially improved this paper. All errors and omissions remain, of course, those of the authors. The authors also wish to thank the community garden managers for giving up their precious time to assist with this study. Grateful thanks are due to Dr Christina Qi Li, spatial analyst with the Gold Coast City Council, who volunteered her own free time to produce Figure 1, the map of the community gardens. Finally, thanks are due to policy officers in the Gold Coast and Brisbane City Councils for their assistance.

Notes

1. The Queensland State Government, under the aegis of the South East Queensland Regional Plan, also explicitly supports the establishment of community gardens as a spatial planning response to rapid growth, intended to foster “safe and healthy communities” (Queensland Government 2009, 80–81).

2. In most cases, after five result pages, additional websites were either not relevant or repeated previous results.

3. The collective values held by the organisation that acts as a guiding principle for gardener behaviour.

4. Skills acquired through direct experience which help individuals to cope with problems commonly encountered in daily life.

5. Cover crop planted specifically to be cut and returned to the soil as high-quality organic matter.

6. At this stage, however, the amount of food miles cannot be quantified since data about the productivity of the gardens (in terms of tonnes of vegetables produced etc.) were not collected. Future research should investigate this potential benefit of community gardens by quantifying carbon offsets and the like.