Sustainable Community Gardens Require Social Engagement and Training: A Users’ Needs Analysis in Europe

Abstract

Urban gardens are spreading in many cities across Europe, with community gardening being a fundamental form of urban agriculture. While the literature reveals the essential role that community gardens can play in terms of learning and education, no studies have investigated the training needs for participants in community gardens to ensure their successful development. The goal of this article is to evaluate the training requirements of urban community gardens to ensure their successful implementation and their contribution to sustainability in European cities. Two questionnaires of users’ needs analysis were designed and implemented in Berlin, Bologna, Budapest, and Cartagena. The results unveiled the need to re-enforce the training in the formation and community building phases of community gardens towards ensuring the creation of an engaged gardening community to maintain activity, particularly for top-down activities (e.g., research-related gardens). Users claimed their need for being trained on crop management skills (e.g., maintenance, bed preparation, organic practices) and on communication skills to further disseminate their activity, thereby increasing the potential for citizen engagement. Such requirements could be overcome with the creation of urban gardens networks, where experiences and knowledge are shared among practitioners. Policy recommendations are provided based on the outputs of this study.

Features and Functions of Multifunctional Urban Agriculture in the Global North: A Review

“…Policies often underestimate the ES associated with multifunctional UA, overall resulting in a limited support to initiatives that in turn, as previously described, would provide climate change prevention and resilience, job creation and social inclusion. Furthermore, given that UA initiatives' long-term success is hindered by both the lack of training and the difficulties in formal community engagement (Ochoa et al, 2019), appropriate policies for awareness creation should be fostered. Accordingly, in recent years, some municipalities have integrated support policies for UA, as in the case of Paris (Colle et al, 2017) or Barcelona (Giacchè et al, 2016) as further described in the coming sections.…”

How Can Innovation in Urban Agriculture Contribute to Sustainability? A Characterization and Evaluation Study from Five Western European Cities

“…Regarding the social dimension of sustainability, the existing literature reveals the contribution of UA to an increased knowledge of agri-food systems and sustainability [40,69], including the role of school gardens [69,70] and the associated training opportunities [53] (e.g., community gardens [71]). Several studies have proved that engaging in UA improves the access to healthy food as well as the consumption of fruits and vegetables [72][73][74], while positively contributing to the mental health of the participants [75,76].…”

Towards sustainable urban food systems: Analyzing contextual and intrapsychic drivers of growing food in small-scale urban agriculture

“…Drake and Lawson [ 43 ] discussed that the time and commitment required to pursue gardening activities may deter some people from participation. On the other hand, lack of knowledge and awareness can also be an obstacle [ 39 ]. One strategy to increase community engagement is promoting networking and learning across social communities [ 10 ].…”

“…One strategy to increase community engagement is promoting networking and learning across social communities [ 10 ]. This may involve organization of social events to increase integration and knowledge exchange [ 39 ]. Nevertheless, there is a lack of deeper understanding of how social events influence decisions to grow foods.…”

“…CGs. Educational and technical assistance for CG projects are often cited as facilitators of successful community gardening [38][39][40]. For instance, examining the resources needed for successful urban agricultural projects in New York City, Cohen and Reynolds [38] found that technical assistance to practitioners is a crucial factor.…”