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Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
ISSN: 2152-0801 online
https://www.foodsystemsjournal.org
Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018 187
What gardens grow: Outcomes from home
and community gardens supported by
community-based food justice organizations
Christine M. Porter *
University of Wyoming
Submitted March 30, 2017 / Revised July 24, September 11, and November 13, 2017 /
Accepted November 15, 2017 / Published online June 18, 2018
Citation: Porter, C. M. (2018). Growing our own: Characterizing food-production strategies with
five U.S. community-based food justice organizations. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and
Community Development, 8(Suppl. 1), 187–205. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2018.08A.002
Copyright © 2018 by the Author. Published by the Lyson Center for Civic Agriculture and Food Systems. Open access under CC BY license.
Abstract
Supporting home and community gardening is a
core activity of many community-based organiza-
tions (CBOs) that are leading the food justice
movement in the U.S. Using mixed methods across
multiple action-research studies with five food
justice CBOs, this paper documents myriad layers
of benefits that gardening yields.
Our participatory methods included conduct-
ing extensive case studies with five CBOs over five
years; quantifying food harvests with 33 gardeners
in Laramie, Wyoming, and surveying them about
other gardening outcomes (20 responded); and
conducting feasibility studies for assessing health
impacts of gardening with two of the five CBOs,
both in Wyoming.
Analyses of these diverse data yielded four
categories of gardening benefits: (1) improving
health; (2) producing quality food in nutritionally
meaningful quantities; (3) providing cultural
services; and (4) fostering healing and trans-
formation.
Examining these results together illustrates a
breadth of health, food, and cultural ecosystem
* Associate professor and Wyoming Excellence Chair of
Community and Public Health; Food Dignity and Growing
Resilience Principal Investigator; Division of Kinesiology &
Health, College of Health Sciences, University of Wyoming;
1000 East University Avenue, Department 3196; Laramie, WY
82071 USA; christine.porter@uwyo.edu
Contributors and Supporting Agencies
Blue Mountain Associates; Feeding Laramie Valley; Whole
Community Project; East New York Farms!; Dig Deep Farms;
USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture; National
Institutes of Health.
Funding Disclosure
Food Dignity (http://www.fooddignity.org) is supported by
A
griculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant
no. 2011-68004-30074 from the USDA National Institute of
Food and Agriculture. The Growing Resilience pilots are
supported by grants from the National Institute of General
Medical Sciences (8 P20 GM103432-12) from the National
Institutes of Health. The full Growing Resilience project
(http://www.growingresilience.org) is supported by the
National Heart Lung and Blood Institute and the National
Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01 HL126666-01)
from the National Institutes of Health.
FoodDignity
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
ISSN: 2152-0801 online
http://www.foodsystemsjournal.org
188 Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018
services, and social change yields of home and
community food gardening in these communities.
It also points to the need to support CBOs in
enabling household food production and to future
research questions about what CBO strategies
most enhance access to and benefits of gardening,
especially in communities most hurt by racism
and/or insufficient access to fresh food.
Keywords
Home Gardens; Community Gardens; Public
Health; Community Food Systems; Community
Food Production; Food Justice; Community-based
Organizations (CBOs); Community-based
Participatory Research (CBPR); Food Dignity
Introduction
Food gardening has become a mainstay of
community-based food security, food justice and
even obesity prevention initiatives in the United
States (Gatto, Martinez, Spruijt-Metz, & Davis,
2017; Gonzalez, Potteiger, Bellows, Weissman, &
Mees, 2016; Lawson, 2005; Saul & Curtis, 2013;
Zanko, Hill, Estabrooks, Niewolny, & Zoellner,
2014). In addition, gardening has becoming
increasingly popular overall in the U.S. For
example, the Five Borough Farm project in New
York City documented 700 community food
gardens and farms in the city in 2011; then, in a
second canvas three years later, they identified over
900 (Altman et al., 2014). Similarly, a National
Gardening Association study found that household
gardening increased by 17% over five years (2008–
2013), including by 38% among lower-income
households (≤US$35,000). Also, given the 63%
increase in gardening among millennials, public
interest in gardening seems unlikely to abate soon
(National Gardening Association, 2014).
Given that a growing body of research sug-
gests food gardening may offer a partial solution
towards tackling a few of our most wicked social
problems in the U.S.—including chronic disease,
food insecurity, socioeconomic inequity, and
shrinking social ties—this growth of food garden-
ing in the U.S. is arguably a welcome trend and one
potentially worthy of public support and invest-
ment. This paper briefly reviews the evidence base
about the benefits of food gardening. It then shares
results from research generated over five years via
a wide range of mixed and participatory methods
with five U.S. food-justice oriented, community-
based organizations (CBOs), to answer the follow-
ing research question: what was the range, quality
and quantity of gardening outcomes in these
communities, with support from these five CBOs?
As the first study in the U.S. to use multiple
methods over multiple years with multiple commu-
nities and CBOs to document multiple forms of
gardening yields, this research contributes an
uniquely rich breadth and depth of data and
analysis to the benefits-of-gardening literature.
Literature Review
Growing literature about benefits of home and
community gardening suggests that gardening
improves health, produces meaningful amounts of
food, and provides multiple forms of ecosystem
services. A smaller body of work, observational or
occasionally theoretical, also considers the role of
gardening in social change.
Health
Health benefits of gardening, that have been
suggested by a mostly observational body of work,
have included increasing fruit and vegetable intake
(Alaimo, Packnett, Miles, & Kruger, 2008;
Armstrong, 2000; Litt et al., 2011; Meinen, Friese,
Wright, & Carrel, 2012; Twiss et al., 2003),
fostering physical activity (Armstrong, 2000;
Draper & Freedman, 2010; Park, Shoemaker, &
Haub, 2009), reducing food insecurity (Baker,
Motton, Seiler, Duggan, & Brownson, 2013;
Corrigan, 2011; Stroink & Nelson, 2009),
improving metal health (Austin, Johnston, &
Morgan, 2006; Brown & Jameton, 2000; van den
Berg, van Winsum-Westra, de Vries, & van Dillen,
2010; Wakefield, Yeudall, Taron, Reynolds, &
Skinner, 2007), improving body mass index (Utter,
Denny, & Dyson, 2016; Zick, Smith, Kowaleski-
Jones, Uno, & Merrill, 2013), and increasing social
capital (Alaimo, Reischl, & Allen, 2010; Armstrong,
2000; Twiss et al., 2003).
The quality of this evidence base is mixed. Few
studies of health impacts of home and community
gardening have control groups and we found none
with randomized control groups. However,
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
ISSN: 2152-0801 online
http://www.foodsystemsjournal.org
Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018 189
evidence should be available by 2022 from three
randomized controlled trials in the U.S. that are
currently recruiting. One is assessing health
impacts of community gardens (University of
University of Colorado at Boulder, Michigan State
University, Colorado School of Public Health,
University of South Carolina, Colorado State
University, & Denver Urban Gardens, 2017). Two
are assessing home food gardens (University of
Wyoming et al., 2016; University of Alabama at
Birmingham, Auburn University, & National
Cancer Institute, 2016). (Note: the Growing
Resilience trial emerged from the feasibility pilot
studies reported in this paper.)
In the meantime, a recent meta-analysis of
quantitative results from 22 garden studies con-
firms most of the health outcomes described above
(Soga, Gaston, & Yamaura, 2017), with the notable
exception of garden impacts on food insecurity,
which was not examined in the included studies.
Food
Though the literature above has provided only
weak evidence about impacts of gardening on food
security, a growing body of harvest quantification
research suggests that gardeners harvest nutrition-
ally and economically meaningful amounts of food
(Algert, Baameur, & Renvall, 2014; Algert,
Diekmann, Renvall, & Gray, 2016; CoDyre, Fraser,
& Landman, 2015; Gittleman, Jordan, & Brelsford,
2012; Pourias, Duchemin, & Aubry, 2015; Smith &
Harrington, 2014; Vitiello & Nairn, 2009; Vitiello,
Nairn, Grisso, & Swistak, 2010). Also, a survey
with 66 New York City gardeners found that
gardens were the primary or secondary produce
source for 90% of respondents who were food
insecure (n=19), versus for 71% of the 47 garden-
ers who were food secure (Gregory, Leslie, &
Drinkwater, 2016).
Overall, these findings indicate that it is
plausible that successful food gardening would
improve food security by provisioning nutritional
meaningful quantities of food. Also, obviously,
gardening yields a particular kind of food: fruits
and vegetables. U.S. adults of all socioeconomic
groups eat much less of these foods than recom-
mended (Guenther, Dodd, Reedy, & Krebs-Smith,
2006), and to those struggling with low incomes
(and some living in communities predominantly of
color report price) availability and quality serve as
barriers to consumption (Haynes-Maslow, Parsons,
Wheeler, & Leone, 2013; Yeh et al., 2008). Success-
fully growing produce at home could help over-
come some economic and geographic barriers to
fresh vegetables or fruits.
Other Ecosystem Services
Gardening provides ecosystem services, that is,
benefits that people obtain from ecosystems, such
as fiber, water filtering, and enjoyment (Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). These ecosystem
services include “provisioning” benefits, in pro-
viding food and health outcomes described above.
Evidence suggests that gardening also yields
“regulating” ecosystem services, via increasing
climate and water quality, supporting soil forma-
tion, fostering nutrient cycling, and sustaining
biodiversity (Altman et al., 2014; Calvet-Mir,
Gómez-Baggethun, & Reyes-García, 2012; Cohen
& Reynolds, 2015; Cohen, Reynolds, & Sanghvi,
2012).
The third set of ecosystem services that
gardens provide are cultural (including spiritual),
social, and recreational services. Growing food,
including culturally relevant foods, has helped
some communities maintain cultural connection
and continuity (Companion, 2016; Hartwig &
Mason, 2016). Several garden studies have found
that participating in community gardens especially,
has helped to build social capital and connected-
ness, self-efficacy, and civic engagement (Firth,
Maye, & Pearson, 2011; Hartwig & Mason, 2016;
Litt et al., 2011; Ober Allen, Alaimo, Elam, &
Perry, 2008). For example, one case study with an
urban gardening program found that it provided a,
“social bridge to build community cohesion”
(Gonzalez et al., 2016, p. 107). One scholar,
examining the history of gardening in the U.S. and
two community garden cases in San Fransico,
suggests that such, “organized gardening projects,”
serve to, “cultivate specific kinds of citizen-
subjects” (Pudup, 2008). Pudup’s paper points to a
fourth category of gardening outcomes, i.e., shap-
ing society and promoting social change work
(while also noting that such cultural services are
not always inherently positive; see also Glover,
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190 Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018
2004). The cultural ecosystem services that gardens
yield might be seen as both foundations for and
contributions to ways gardening also might foster
social change.
Social Change
Organizers and organizations in the U.S. food jus-
tice movement (Bradley & Herrera, 2016; Sbicca,
2012) extensively employ home and community
gardening as part of anti-oppression and other
transformational strategies for creating equity,
health, sustainability, and/or food sovereignty
(Broad, 2016; White, 2011a, 2011b, 2017; Winne,
2008, 2010). Others have also linked propagating
seeds with promoting social change (Follmann &
Viehoff, 2015; McKay, 2011; Nettle, 2014). This
includes empowerment outcomes identified in case
studies with Seattle community gardens (Hou,
Johnson, & Lawson, 2009) and the Five Borough
Farm action research project documenting benefits
of community-based food production for, “making
New York City a healthier and more socially con-
nected, economically secure, and environmentally
sustainable city” (Cohen, Reynolds, & Sanghvi,
2012, p. 9).
Of the four categories of gardening yields
discussed here—health, food, cultural ecosystem
services, and social change—social change out-
comes are the widest reaching and also the most
challenging to systematically identify, attribute, and
assess. The aforementioned health, food, and
cultural “services” from gardening plausibly enable
and contribute to such larger social change. Indeed,
in their analysis of case studies with four commu-
nity garden groups in London, United Kingdom,
two scholars find that these organized gardening
projects foster, “prefigurative social change,” based
on a shared practice of gardening rather than on
strategic intention, “opening up new possibilities
for being, seeing and doing” (Guerlain &
Campbell, 2016, p. 220).
The research presented here adds to the
garden outcome literature described above by
examining results from a group of related studies
using multiple research methods to identify and
characterize yields from home and community
gardening.
Methods
This work originated with Food Dignity, a five-year
action-research project about food system sustain-
ability and security strategies employed by five
food justice CBOs in the U.S. These CBO partners
were Blue Mountain Associates (BMA) on Wind
River Indian Reservation; Feeding Laramie Valley
(FLV) in Laramie, Wyoming; Whole Community
Project (WCP) in Ithaca, New York; East New
York Farms! (ENYF) in Brooklyn, New York; and
Dig Deep Farms (DDF) in the unincorporated
areas of Ashland and Cherryland in the San
Francisco Bay area of California.
Results in this paper derive from Food Dignity
and other collaborative action-research projects
conducted with these five CBOs between 2011 and
2016. As described in more detail below, we used a
wide array of methods in three relatively distinct
but related research endeavors:
(1) Developing deep case studies, or rigorous
stories, with and about the work of each of
the five CBOs partners in Food Dignity.
(2) Quantifying garden yields via gardener-
researchers weighing every harvest and
assessing other forms of outcomes via
surveys with the gardeners. This was a
sub-project of Food Dignity conducted in
partnership with FLV. We called it “Team
GROW.”
(3) Implementing controlled trial feasibility
pilot studies to assess the health impacts of
gardens with FLV and BMA. We called
these pilots “Growing Resilience.”
I was the project director and principal
investigator for all of these studies.
Food Dignity Case Study Methods
The main research method in Food Dignity is
rigorous storytelling, or deep case studies, to
document the context, history, and practices of the
five CBO collaborators. Our methods included
conventional case study approaches (Yin, 2009).
We conducted 150 stakeholder interviews, over
five years of insider and outsider participation and
observation, and extensive primary and secondary
document analysis. We created collaborative
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
ISSN: 2152-0801 online
http://www.foodsystemsjournal.org
Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018 191
pathway models with each CBO, which illustrate
the theories of change underlying a CBO’s activi-
ties by linking them to expected outcomes
(Hargraves & Denning, 2017). We also produced
first-person digital stories about our journeys to
food justice and Food Dignity work, 12 of which
were created by CBO partners (Food Dignity,
2015).
For this research, I sifted back through this
enormous data set to identify outcomes from
gardening. I coded the five CBO collaborative
pathway models and the transcripts of the 12
community-authored digital stories for gardening-
related themes, extracting every mention of the
word “garden” and its variations for further
analysis. I focused particularly on these because
they are products in their own right, which CBO
partners in Food Dignity have used to codify their
work. I also electronically searched for variations
on the word “garden” to identify all potentially
relevant passages from our collection of interview
transcripts and our field notes from participation
and observation. I then analyzed these passages for
instances of outcomes, desired or achieved, in
association with home or community gardening.
Ultimately, I grouped these outcomes into the four
themes identified in the results section. Food
Dignity co-investigators in each of the five CBOs
have reviewed and approved the findings reported
here.
Team GROW Garden Harvest Measures and Survey
Team GROW (Gardener Researchers of
Wyoming) formed a subset of the Food Dignity
research with FLV. In 2012, FLV convened five
experienced gardeners to ask what garden-related
research questions they had. This resulted in the
Team GROW endeavor to quantify food produc-
tion in Laramie home and community garden plots.
Between 2012 and 2014, a total of 33 gardening
households tending 39 unique plots weighed and
recorded each of their garden harvests. Their
records included whether they ate, stored, or
shared the harvest.
After the pilot year, FLV recruited 31 partici-
pants (including three households repeating from
2012) for the 2013 season, actively seeking diversity
both in demographics and gardening expertise. In
2014, only gardeners who participated in 2012
and/or 2013 were invited to participate again.
Twelve gardeners tending 14 plots measured their
harvests again in the 2014 growing season.
In 2015, we also surveyed the gardener-
researchers about other outcomes of their garden-
ing. The outcome questions in the survey, listed in
Table 1, drew from the garden literature reviewed
above and from the input of Team GROW mem-
bers during annual planning and celebration
meetings. We also asked a parallel set of questions
about their motivations for gardening. FLV invited
all Team GROW gardeners who had participated
in any year, whom they could still reach (n=28 out
of the 33 households), to take the survey. Twenty
responded.
Core results from the harvest data are reported
elsewhere (Conk & Porter, 2016). In this study, I
provide additional outcome detail from that data
and analyze results from the 2015 survey.
Growing Resilience Controlled Trial Feasibility Pilots
By 2012, FLV and BMA had found more com-
munity interest in food gardening than they could
support with their Food Dignity sub-award fund-
ing alone. Building on this interest, the observa-
tional literature, and early reports in our case study
work about health benefits of gardening, we
secured additional funding for a two-site feasibility
study to assess health impacts of new home gar-
dens. The research here reports results from these
pilots, conducted in 2013. We used a controlled
trial design and were guided by a community-
university steering committee in each place. We
called the pilots Growing Resilience.
We recruited 21 households with 29 adult
participants total, across the two communities.
Nine households with 10 participants were in
Laramie, Wyoming, where three people in three
households were controls and seven people in six
households gardened. In Wind River Indian
Reservation, BMA, and tribal health organization,
partners recruited 12 households with 19 adults.
Eight households were randomized to gardening
and four to serve as controls. Thus, in total, one
third of the households (14) received garden
installation and support from FLV or BMA in
2013. The remaining seven households served as
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
ISSN: 2152-0801 online
http://www.foodsystemsjournal.org
192 Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018
control households (some of whom received
garden support the following year). Each CBO
recruited these households from their personal and
professional networks among those interested in
gardening but who did not have a home or com-
munity food garden in the past year.
With each adult participant, we sought to
measure height and weight, administer a validated
quality-of-life survey that assesses mental and
physical health (SF-12® Health Survey version 2),
1 Based on this experience, we completely redesigned our data-
gathering approach in the full-scale Growing Resilience ran-
domized controlled trial currently underway in Wind River
Indian Reservation (University of Wyoming et al., 2016).
Instead of scheduling data-gathering appointments with par-
ticipants at their homes, households came to a central data-
and assess hand strength before gardening began
(in May 2013) and then at the tail end of the gar-
dening season (in September). The survey included
an open-ended opportunity for comment. We were
able to gather complete pre- and post-data with all
10 adult participants in Laramie. In Wind River, we
collected pre- and post data-for one control adult
and six gardening adults; we have only one data
point for the remaining 12 participating adults.1
We also held focus groups in late 2013, one in
gathering location, with transportation provided as needed and
stipends provided. The project also now includes more sub-
stantial partnerships with the tribal health organizations
involved than during the feasibility pilot. So far, in our first
two years of the full-scale study, we have had excellent
participant retention and return rates.
Table 1. Team GROW Survey Responses to the Question “To what extent does your food gardening actually
result in these outcomes (regardless of whether or not they are motivating factors for you)?”
Results below denote the percent of respondents and (number of respondents) for each “extent” rank. Items are listed in
decreasing order of respondent ranking (by the sum of “to a moderate extent” or higher answers).
Not at all To some
extent
T
o a moderate
extent To a great
extent To a very
great extent Respondent
total #
Strongest rated outcomes
I taught my kids about gardening
(leave blank if you do not have
children at home) 0% 0% 0% 50% 50% 4
I felt productive 0% 0% 30% 40% 30% 20
I had better quality food 0% 5% 5% 50% 40% 20
I grew food that I knew was safe 0% 5% 25% 20% 50% 20
I shared food with others 5% 5% 35% 30% 25% 20
I experienced leisure or pleasure 5% 5% 15% 30% 45% 20
I was more self-sufficient 0% 16% 26% 16% 42% 19
Weakest rated outcomes
I spent time outdoors 0% 10% 20% 35% 35% 20
I reduced my stress 10% 10% 25% 20% 35% 20
I increased my physical activity 0% 25% 25% 20% 30% 20
I improved my health 0% 25% 25% 30% 20% 20
I saved money on food 5% 25% 40% 20% 10% 20
I met other community members 5% 35% 15% 25% 20% 20
I ensured my household had
enough to eat 15% 30% 25% 15% 15% 20
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Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018 193
Wyoming and one on the reservation, which
included representatives from 12 of the 21 partici-
pating households. In each group, one person from
the University of Wyoming facilitated the group
while another took detailed notes that approxi-
mated transcription.
For this study, I coded the open-ended survey
responses and the focus group notes for outcomes
of gardening. In addition, though the sample sizes
were much too small to draw any quantitative
conclusions, I share some of the pre- and post-
results in an anecdotal way.
Results
By examining the gardening outcome results from
the mix of research methods described above, I
identified four categories of benefits from food
gardening: (1) improving individual health; (2) pro-
ducing healthy food; (3) providing cultural ecosys-
tem services in recreation, culture and social
networks; and (4) fostering healing and
transformation.
1. Gardens for health
Results from the research projects described here
corroborate the growing evidence base that
suggests gardening improves health and wellness
for gardeners. For example, in the focus groups
and post-season surveys conducted as part of the
feasibility pilots on health impacts of gardens, new
gardening participants in Laramie and on Wind
River Indian Reservation reported four types of
health benefits:
• Reduction in medication use for chronic health
issues (e.g., “My blood pressure went down.
I’m taking less meds”; “My doctor took me
off my anti-depressants… it really made a
difference for my depression and my pain
levels… taking fewer painkillers.”)
• Deepened and widened family and social networks
(e.g., “It connected the neighborhood. It
became our little mini-community”; “It
brought the family closer—everyone
wanted to see what was coming from the
garden. They’d all be around the kitchen
when we were cooking.”)
• Improved emotional health (e.g., “It gave me
routine and a purpose to be outside in the
sunshine. It calmed me”; “It’s just fun. I put
my swing right by the garden.”)
• Improved access to fruits and vegetables (e.g., “I
love fruits and vegetables, but can’t afford
it… this is something I can afford”; “It
provided more fresh stuff for our family…
that really helped our diet.”)
Quantitatively, while the pilot sample was not
even close to being powered to detect significant
differences, the Laramie pre- and post-data we
gathered with all seven gardening and three
control adults might possibly indicate the gardeners
could possibly enjoy better outcomes than controls
in BMI, hand strength, and mental health. For
example, the three control participants gained an
average of 4.67lbs. (2.11kg), with a mean BMI
increase of 0.57 kg/m2. The seven gardeners
gained 1.14lbs. (1.52kg) on average, with a 0.2
BMI increase. On the 100-point, 12-item Short
Form Health Survey (SF-12) scale for mental
health, gardeners improved by seven points on
average and controls decreased by one point on
average. We have found similar directional (but
again, nonsignificant) trends in a second pilot
design year with another 10 households in
Laramie 2016 (unpublished data), and these results
are consistent with the gardens-and-health
research reviewed in the introduction. However,
our samples were much too small for these
numbers to suggest more than the need for
further research. We are currently assessing these
and other health outcome questions in an RCT
with BMA and other partners on Wind River
Indian Reservation (Growing Resilience in Wind
River Indian Reservation (GR), 2017).
In Team GROW, all 20 gardener-researchers
(the Laramie gardeners who had quantified their
food harvests) who responded to a survey about
the outcomes they experienced from gardening,
reported that gardening benefited their health to at
least “some extent.” (See Table 1 for full survey
results about gardening outcomes.) In addition,
their top ranked outcome from gardening was
“feeling productive.”
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
ISSN: 2152-0801 online
http://www.foodsystemsjournal.org
194 Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018
In addition, community-based coinvestigators
and participants in the Food Dignity project have
described more systemic and community-level
yields of gardening that are related to health. I
share these in the healing and transformation
section below.
2. Gardens for high-quality food
Our research indicates that gardeners produce
nutritionally relevant quantities of food. In addi-
tion, gardeners highly value the quality of the food
they produce.
In the Team GROW research, home and
community gardeners measured the quantities of
food they were growing between 2012 and 2014 in
Laramie, Wyoming. Results indicate that the
average plot was 253ft2 (23.5m2) and yielded an
average of 128lbs. (58.06kg) f food, or 0.51lbs.
(0.23kg) per square foot. The average vegetable
harvest was enough to supply two adults with the
daily U.S. Department of Agriculture-recom-
mended amount of vegetables for four and a half
months (Conk & Porter 2016). This is in spite of
Laramie having a challenging high-altitude, windy
and semi-arid growing climate (designated as
USDA zone 4b, the toughest growing zone in the
continental U.S.).
Variation in productivity rates between Team
GROW gardeners was enormous. For example, in
the 2014 season, harvest rates varied nearly 10-fold
between plots (by 967%, ranging from 0.12 to 1.16
lb./ft2 [0.59 to 5.66 kg/m2]). Within-gardener yield
variation, from season to season in the same plot,
was much lower, though still substantial, at 39% on
average (calculated from the 12 gardeners who
participated in more than one season). At the top
end, the gardener with the highest yield rate by
weight grew 247lbs. (112.04 kg) of food in a 120ft2
(11.15m2) community garden plot (2.06 lbs./ft2
[10.06 kg/m2], in 2012). The harvest with the high-
est economic value, in total and per square foot,
was US$2,599 worth of produce (calculated at
Laramie Farmers’ Market prices) from a 391ft2
home garden (US$6.64/ft2, in 2013). This included
145lbs. (65.77kg) of cucumbers valued at US$362
and 255lbs. (115.67kg) of tomatoes valued at
US$1,274. Of total harvests recorded by the 31
gardeners participating that season, this particular
gardener raised two-thirds of the cucumbers and
35% of the total tomatoes. Also, that year, at the
other end of productivity, six gardeners—nearly
20% of the participants that season—had harvest
rates under 0.2 lbs./ft2 (0.98kg/m2).
Quantity aside, producing high quality food was
a highly valued outcome among gardeners. The
Team GROW members who took the survey
reported having better quality food and food they
know is safe, as two of the four top-ranked out-
comes from gardening (see Table 1). In another set
of questions about their motivations for gardening
in that survey, which mirrored the outcome ques-
tions, having better quality food emerged as their
top-ranked reason for gardening. Similarly, in inter-
views and during site visits, gardeners working with
the four CBO partners in Food Dignity that
support gardens (ENYF, WCP, BMA, and FLV)
also mentioned the importance of gardening in
yielding quality food. For example, a gardener in
eastern New York noted, “all the vegetables, I
think, are sweeter,” from her garden than what she
can buy in the store. Several people in Wind River
discussed how growing their own food helped to
avoid “chemicals” in store-bought food. One
noted, “the supermarket carrots don’t have hardly
any taste but if you taste one that you grow your-
self, it’s just like the difference between night and
day.” Also, in three of the four communities (with
the exception being Ithaca), at least some of the
interviewees noted that growing their own food
was the best, and sometimes the only, way to get
high quality produce.
Even people new to gardening via the Grow-
ing Resilience feasibility pilots, who had small
gardens (about 80 ft2 [7.43m2] with BMA and 15-
30 ft2 [1.39-2.79m2] with FLV, in accordance with
steering committee advice and gardener prefer-
ences) and struggled with multiple growing chal-
lenges, felt that their gardens gave them meaningful
amounts of food. For example, in addition to the
comments cited above about improved access to
fruits and vegetables, participants reported that “it
gave me fresh vegetables for my family that I grew
and saved me money” and “I can reduce my food
cost.” As one ENYF gardener who was looking
forward to retiring put it, “the main reason for it is
the quality of the food and if you’re retired, you’re
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Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018 195
not going to have the income, so financially it’s
going to help. You’re not going to have to buy all
those foods.”
3. Gardens for “cultural ecosystem services”
The sections above report health and food pro-
visioning ecosystem services provided by gardens.
This section focuses on “cultural ecosystem serv-
ices” that gardens may provide through recreation,
continuation and expansion of cultural and spiritual
traditions, and development or deepening
community networks.
Growing recreation and aesthetic enjoyment. Gardeners
connected with these action research projects talk
about gardening, at least in part, as recreation.
Growing Resilience gardeners described the
pleasure their gardens gave them, saying, for
example, “walking down those steps, digging in the
dirt, having a great time watering, watching the
bees, I’m just in love with those silly bees. I kept
my yard cleaner too.” Another noted that garden-
ing is “something you have to do, but you don’t
feel like you have to.” In the survey of Team
GROW gardeners, 19 out of 20 said they experi-
enced “leisure or pleasure” from gardening to at
least some extent (Table 1).
In addition, the community gardens and other
public food growing spaces supported by the
CBOs draw not only gardeners, but also garden
and farm visitors who watch the produce develop
over the season, enjoy the flowers, and/or learn
about the foods people grow. For example, a
visitor to FLV said she had walked by their build-
ing regularly just to monitor the progress of pump-
kins being grown to share with the Laramie com-
munity, and appeared to be a little disappointed
when they were harvested. FLV, DDF and ENYF
in particular, regularly receive formal requests for
tours and, collectively, host hundreds of visitors
each year who want to admire and learn from their
work.
Growing culture and spirit. BMA on Wind River
Indian Reservation is helping community members
restore traditional varieties of Indian corn and re-
establish chokecherries. Gardeners supported by
ENYF in Brooklyn grow culturally important
foods such as callaloo, long beans, bitter gourd,
and hot bonnet peppers. Gardeners in both places
help anchor local farmers markets, providing not
only fresh produce in general, but diverse varieties
that would not otherwise be available for purchase.
One gardener who sells at the ENYF market noted
that “things that sell like hot bread in the market is
callaloo. You cannot plant enough callaloo.” These
outcomes include, not only maintaining cultural
food traditions, but also sharing them. For
example, through their Food Dignity connections,
a Jamaican gardener in East New York grew Indian
corn from Wind River seeds. Some gardeners in
the feasibility pilot studies about gardening
appreciated learning about vegetables that were
new to them, one saying, “who would have
thought I would fall in love with bok choy?”
Growing people and relationships. Gardeners report
sharing and exchange harvests, labor, and knowl-
edge with their communities. This sharing is likely
one of the core means by which gardening deepens
social networks and connections.
In Team GROW, the gardener-researchers,
who tracked whether they ate, stored, or shared
each harvest, shared 30% of what they grew with
others (Conk & Porter, 2016). Those who
responded to the survey also reported “sharing
food with others” as both a motivation for and an
outcome of gardening (Table 1).
In interviews, many gardeners talked about
sharing food, exchanging knowledge, and offering
and receiving physical assistance with gardening
labor. Several described, not just what they gave,
but also what they receive by sharing. For example,
one experienced gardener said that inspiring and
mentoring people to grow their own food, “just
makes me feel so good.” She also noted the physi-
cal help she gets when people come to visit her
garden, noting, “I wish that I’d had more people
come out. One thing that helps me, is I can’t do all
the physical stuff very well anymore, but it passes
[knowledge] on and I like to pass on my passion.”
Another person reported that someone who shared
her land for growing food for the community felt,
“glad that she could provide something. She
doesn’t have a lot of resources but she has this yard
so she was glad that she could use that yard to
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196 Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018
benefit others and to have that be a resource.”
Some gardeners in the feasibility pilots reported
with pride, being consulted about gardening; for
example, “I had people asking me, how do you do
this? What did you use? I’m the expert on raised
gardens now, of my friends.”
Some gardeners in the feasibility studies who
struggled with depression, physical movement
limitations, or both, reported that their new gar-
dens gave them a reason to get up in the morning,
noting, “it got me on a better sleep schedule” and
“it got me out of bed.” When one person in the
Laramie, Wyoming focus group said that, “I spent
more time outside than I ever have,” another
replied, “wasn’t that neat?” and a third confirmed
“me too!” They talked about children coming over
to point out new growth or study bugs in the
gardens, and friends and neighbors coming over to
eat from their gardens or even just to admire them;
for example, “my friends came over, and sat on the
patio and looked at the garden while we ate. People
just really liked it. It was pleasant. We had lunch,
we picked fresh basil, made sandwiches.”
Also, several gardeners most involved with the
Ithaca, Wind River Reservation and Laramie-based
CBOs (WCP, BMA and FLV, respectively) have
described the local collaboration teams in these
action-research projects as feeling like family. One
of the Team GROW gardener-researchers said that
the project had connected her with “my people.”
All but one of the Team GROW survey respond-
ents noted that meeting other community members
was at least a partial outcome from their gardening.
An organizer on Wind River Indian
Reservation describes how gardening also helps to
educate children (Potter, 2015), which illustrates
results from the small subset of Team GROW
survey respondents (4 out of 20) who had children
at home, who unanimously ranked teaching their
children as an outcome from gardening (Table 1).
Both WCP and ENYF intentionally build inter-
generational relationships by matching teens with
local elders who provide mentorship while receiv-
ing help with their gardening (Brangman, 2017;
Daftary-Steel & Gervais, 2015).
These “cultural ecosystem services” create
foundations for and contribute to the last category
of outcomes from gardening found in this study:
individual and community healing, and transfor-
mation.
4. Gardens for healing and transformation
The five CBOs collaborating in these food system
action research projects both report and aspire to
individual and collective healing and transforma-
tion with their communities. They intentionally
design their community food growing and growing
support activities to help reach these goals (Porter,
2018a, this issue), as articulated in their collabora-
tive pathway models (Hargraves & Denning, 2017).
They also particularly aim to support people and
communities who suffer the most and offer
expertise derived from lived experience with food
injustice and food insecurity.
BMA and FLV partnered in the feasibility
pilots as part of intentionally using home gardens
as a strategy for helping people on Wind River
Indian Reservation and in Laramie, Wyoming,
increase control of their lives and their physical
health. A gardener supported by FLV said, “I never
would have attempted a garden without this. It
wasn’t a possibility. Without this, it would have
never happened.” Another also said, “I never
would have had a garden. I wouldn’t have gardened
at all without this project.” A third mentioned she
could not get down on her knees to tend her gar-
den, so it was the raised boxes that FLV provided
that made it possible for her to grow food. More
broadly, at the start of the Growing Resilience
pilots, the head of a tribal health organization
collaborating with BMA and me said he approved
of the gardening project idea, because, “we need to
put health back into the hands of the people.”
Similarly, an expert gardener working with ENYF
noted that she and other gardeners feel that,
“growing, sharing and selling fresh food, growing
stuff and selling it to the community, it’s making
the community healthier. It’s making us, me,
mentally healthier, because people see that this
comes from the heart, it’s going here.”
Achievement of such transformative outcomes
is challenging to assess or attribute, but the results
from these action-research projects do illustrate
some examples of how gardening and other forms
of community food production have contributed
to fostering health and transformation.
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Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018 197
Several of the digital stories composed by
some Food Dignity partners to share their indivi-
dual journeys in food justice work vividly illustrate
these themes of growing food for healing and
transformation. For example, two men who
worked as farmers at DDF entitled their stories,
“Fresh Start,” and, “My New Life,” with each
describing how growing food offered pathways
away from jail or prison (Rucker, 2015; Silva,
2015). The availability of these paths was no
accident; their boss, a captain in the Alameda
County Sherriff’s Department who co-founded
DDF, entitled his story, “When Good Food Makes
for Good Policing” (Neideffer, 2015).
Some gardeners have planted to regain control
of their health and to heal. One gardener began
growing her own food to recover her health after
becoming highly chemical sensitive from exposure
to pesticides (Dunning & Owens, 2016). Another
says she planted gardens to take root, more
figuratively, in a new community (Dunning, 2015).
One participant in the feasibility pilot about health
impacts of gardens reported that gardening saved
her life. Several gardeners on Wind River Indian
Reservation talked about growing their own food
to take control over their diabetes and to prevent
their children from being diagnosed by building
healthy lifestyles, in addition to providing well for
their families overall.
For some, gardening also appeared as a
gateway to improving their communities and
increasing personal influence. One young DDF
farmer, in conversation with me, marveled at the
power he had to physically change his community
after being part of transforming a corner lot from
an eyesore into a beautiful and productive garden.
A person who became a gardener with help from
FLV via the feasibility pilot, later went to his first
city council meeting to support providing public
land for a proposed FLV community farm. While
there, earlier in the agenda, he spoke powerfully in
favor of locating a recreation facility on the west
side of Laramie, which is literally and figuratively
on the other side of the tracks from the city center.
Similarly, that was also my first Laramie city
council meeting, and though there to support the
farm proposal, I also spoke up on an earlier agenda
item, in favor of aquifer protection. In this way,
our involvement with FLV also led us to become
more active citizens, and to speak up in this formal
policy-making setting. Leaders at ENYF talk about
people in their communities dedicated to growing
food to take back empty lots, beautify their worlds,
and feed their neighbors (Daftary-Steel, 2015;
Marshall, 2015; Vigil, 2015). Others describe how
growing food contains transformational lessons
about having, “the grace to receive” (Dunning
2015) and heeding calls for environmental healing
(Brangman, 2015). Other stories are about viewing,
acting, and being in our world in a transformed
way (Daftary-Steel, 2015), including, as another
storyteller concludes, “once you start to see the
potential in the people and the place, you can’t help
but look for that everywhere you go” (Vigil 2015).
Discussion
Results from this research confirm and expand
upon previous work showing that benefits of food
gardening include: improving individual health;
producing nutritionally meaningful amounts of
quality food; providing cultural ecosystem services
in recreation, culture and social networks; and
fostering healing and transformation. This array of
positive outcomes suggests that supporting home
and community food gardening offers an effective
public health and sustainable community
development strategy.
Understanding more about why and how gar-
dening produces these outcomes, and for and with
whom, would inform how to best deepen and
broaden these and other positive impacts. To begin
outlining future action and research agendas in this
arena, I draw from the results presented in this
paper and from previous research to discuss
potential mechanisms.
Health, Food, and Gardening
For some of the individual health benefits associ-
ated with gardening, mechanisms that likely pro-
duce them seem obvious. For example, being
physically active and reducing sedentary time are
known to improve overall wellbeing (Kohl et al.,
2012; Warburton, Nicol, & Bredin, 2006) and
gardening inherently entails activity. The link
between producing vegetables and increased access
to and consumption of them seems transparent.
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198 Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018
Spending time outside is known to improve mental
health and gardening requires being outdoors
(Ryan, Weinstein, Bernstein, Brown, Mistretta, &
Gagné, 2010). In addition, several gardeners here
reported that their gardens draw them to sit outside
even when not actively gardening. Why being
outside improves emotional health is less certain,
though one plausible mechanism is that sun expo-
sure improves vitamin D levels, while inadequate
levels are associated with depression (Penckofer,
Kouba, Byrn, & Estwing Ferrans, 2010). An
additional theory involves exposure to mood-
improving microbes that are common in soil
(Reber et al., 2016), which may more easily transfer
to humans via gardened foods than via store-
bought foods (Bryce, 2013).
The power conveyed by becoming a producer,
as opposed to only a consumer, may also improve
well-being; self-determination theory suggests that
feelings of autonomy and control contribute to
health (Deci & Ryan, 2008). Also, gardeners report
feeling productive, which is associated with a
higher quality of life (Kim, 2013; Litt, Schmiege,
Hale, Buchenau, & Sancar, 2015), especially when
the productive activity also benefits others (Aknin
et al., 2013; Matz-Costa, Besen, Boone James, &
Pitt-Catsouphes, 2014). Some of the gardeners in
this study have said that sharing their food and
their knowledge has enhanced their own well-
being. This is in addition to the benefits of
increased family and community feelings of con-
nectedness found in this and previous research.
Though some of the health benefits observed
in association with gardening maybe be only that—
correlated but not causal, simply indicating that
healthier people are more likely to garden—the
feasibility pilots reported here and in the 22 studies
in the meta-analysis review (Soga, Gaston, &
Yamaura, 2017) all involved pre- and post-health
outcome measures. This time order, of hypothe-
sized cause before effect, adds to the plausibility of
gardening positively affecting health. Also, argu-
ably, if a person reports that gardening makes them
feel healthier, as so many in this and other studies
do, then their subjective well-being is indeed
improved by definition. If a survey used to meas-
ure well-being (such as the SF-12 used in these
feasibility pilots) does not capture this
improvement, then this is a failure of the
instrument.
Healing, Transformation and Gardening Support
The array of potential causal pathways for health
and food benefits of gardening discussed above, if
real, would suggest that such benefits would accrue
to gardeners at large, even those who do not
receive technical assistance or associate with food
justice CBOs that support such food production.
This would also likely be true for many of the
recreational services that gardening provides.
However, it seems plausible that the, “growing
people and relationships,” outcomes, and more-
over ,“healing and transformation,” ones, would be
enhanced by the support strategies the five CBOs
use. Moreover, CBOs extend these benefits to
people who wish to garden but could or would not
without such support. Because all of the gardeners
in this research were associated with the work of
food justice CBOs, I can only hypothesize from
our observations about how these associations may
have impacted distribution and depth of these
gardening outcomes.
The broad set of benefits in culture and spirit,
people and relationships, and healing and trans-
formation reported here, appear to be entwined
with and emerging from the CBOs’ strategies for
supporting gardening and gardeners. As described
elsewhere (Porter, 2018a, this issue), these CBOs
extensively use organizing strategies to achieve
transformational goals with their communities.
Technical support for gardening, such as that
traditionally provided by cooperative extension
agencies in the U.S. and also included in activities
of these CBOs, simply aims to help improve
gardeners’ skill levels for greater food production.
However, rather than as an end in itself, the CBOs
view gardening as a strategic activity that provides
one of many means to larger ends of community
health, food security, equity, and power. These
CBOs intentionally enable gardeners to also
become vendors, farmers, mentors, donors, policy
advocates, educators, grantees, grantors, and more,
if and as they wish to. They also help enable people
to become gardeners, or even farmers, if they wish
to. As two food justice activist scholars note, “no
amount of fresh produce will fix urban America’s
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Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018 199
food and health gap unless it is accompanied by
changes in the structures of ownership and immi-
gration laws and a reversal of the diminished
political and economic power of the poor and
lower working-class” (Holt Giménez & Shattuck,
2011, p. 133). As articulated in their collaborative
pathway models (Hargraves & Denning, 2017), all
five CBOs aim to increase political and economic
power of people who currently have the least,
including via supporting community-based food
production such as gardening. As the authors of
case studies with four community gardens in
eastern London argue, such gardens create,
“contexts for effective community mobilization…
opening up new possibilities for being, seeing and
doing” (Guerlain & Campbell, 2016, p. 220). The
intentionality in creating these spaces leads Pudup
(2008) to argue that community gardens should
instead be called organized garden spaces (see also
Saldivar-Tanaka & Krasny, 2004).
As a public health nutrition scholar, when I
present results from this work about health
benefits of gardening, I have reason to fear that I
am framing gardening as another health-behavior-
change imperative: not only should people eat
more fruits and vegetables, they should grow them.
A scientist in the audience at one seminar, who
also identified as a single mother, asked wearily,
“when do I get to rest?” However, the CBO
organizers appear to be agnostic about whether
community members become gardeners at all; they
focus on people and community, not on produc-
tion or even food more generally (Porter, 2018a,
this issue). For example, after the Growing
Resilience feasibility pilots, FLV engaged with me
to redesign our approach to enable people to set
their own health improvement goals and then
choose how to reach them, rather than randomly
assigning people to gardening. By offering multiple
ways for community members to engage, these
CBOs model what Guerlain and Campbell describe
as better accounting “for what participants them-
selves would like to achieve in their own lives,
rather than in relation to externally imposed
notions of what counts as political change” (2016,
p. 220).
That said, when people do wish to garden, four
of the five CBOs (one focuses on community
farming and does not engage directly in gardening
activities) strive to support and enable them to do
so (Porter, 2018a, this issue). The full gardening
support and installation “packages” that FLV and
BMA provide have almost certainly enabled more
people to garden. As reported above, a few of the
FLV gardeners have said explicitly that they would
never have been able to garden without that help.
Also, the community gardening spaces that ENYF,
WCP, and FLV have cultivated offer the space, soil
and, especially with FLV in Laramie, affordable
water, that are all necessary for gardening but not
everyone has access to. Results from another study
within the Food Dignity project, where US$40
gardening mini-grants were randomly provided to
half the attendees at a gardening workshop, found
that even small amounts of material support spur-
red interested people to start or expand food
gardens (Porter, McCrackin, & Naschold, 2016).
Future Research
Results from the three randomized controlled trials
currently underway will substantially improve the
quality, quantity, and specificity of evidence for
how gardening impacts individual health outcomes.
If these studies find positive results, the next ques-
tion would be about if and how much the quantity
of food produced—in total and as rate per area—is
related to health outcomes. Based on our qualita-
tive observations and gardener insights, I would
hypothesize that most of the physical and mental
benefits are not closely tied to productivity, as long
as a harvest does not fail entirely.
In links between healing, transformation, and
gardening support, it seems plausible that technical
assistance alone would likely help gardeners to
improve yield quality and quantity. The enormous
range of harvest rates found in Team GROW
certainly indicates that there is room for such
increases. In addition, technical support would help
urban gardeners avoid and mitigate heavy metal
exposure risks that gardening in contaminated soil
poses (Al-Delaimy & Webb, 2017). However, such
narrow and limited forms of support are unlikely to
enable people, particularly those who face physical,
financial, and/or land access challenges, to begin
growing their own food in the first place. Technical
assistance alone also would not, plausibly, work to
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200 Volume 8, Supplement 1 / June 2018
connect gardeners more directly and deeply with
one another and with other food system activities
(e.g., sharing, selling, advocating, mentoring) the
way the CBOs’ strategic activities aim to (Porter,
2018a, this issue). The social healing and
transformation outcomes, and potential outcomes,
of gardening may hinge upon the kinds of
community organizing strategies that the food
justice CBOs use (Porter, 2018a, this issue).
Conclusion
The gardening outcome data from the Food
Dignity case stories, Team GROW project, and
Growing Resilience feasibility pilots, confirm and
expand findings from previous research which
indicate that gardening improves health, produces
nutritionally meaningful quantities of quality food,
and provides important cultural ecosystem services
(such as recreation, cultural enrichment, and com-
munity building). In addition, perhaps especially
because of the strategies employed by food justice
CBOs that collaborated in this research, gardening
activities have also yielded individual and social
healing and transformation.
Arenas ripe for future research on impacts of
gardening include further quantifying and specify-
ing individual health changes and causality, assess-
ing relationships between garden productivity and
outcomes, and further documenting and evaluating
community-level outcomes. Another action
research priority is trialing and assessing strategies
for maximizing access to gardening and for maxi-
mizing positive outcomes from gardening via
policy, technical, and community-organizing forms
of support. In the meantime, however, the growing
evidence for multiple benefits of home and com-
munity gardening suggests the wisdom of enabling
anyone who wishes to start growing some of her
own food to plant some seeds.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the action research teams of
Food Dignity and Growing Resilience, including
gardener-researchers of Team GROW and Elisabeth
“Livy” Lewis, and especially the community-based
researchers and leaders at each CBO who reviewed
my use of our work here. Thanks also to Monica
Hargraves and Cecilia Denning for their Collabora-
tive Pathway Model work and for reviewing and
advising on my use of those here.
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