Why Community Gardens are Valuable
Community gardens are designed to
improve a community. The concept of
community gardens developed long
before the Victory Gardens of World
War II, the oldest known in the
United States is about 250 years old
in Winston-Salem, NC. Today's
gardens encompass a wide range of
purposes. They include not only
gardens where people grow food
together for their own consumption,
but also donation gardens combating
hunger, educational gardens teaching
adults or school children, market
gardens supplementing incomes, and
gardens providing mental or physical
therapy. Some simply provide a venue
for sharing the love of gardening.
What all these gardens have in
common is that they are the catalyst
that brings people together working
toward a common purpose.
Building Communities: A community
garden, if put in the right place
and sufficiently supported, provides
a public demonstration that
residents can build something
beautiful together. If residents can
work together to create a productive
green space, they can also use those
skills to address critical problems
like crime, homelessness, and blight
plaguing their communities. In parks
and other highly public places, the
regular presence of responsible
adults can reduce crime and promote
productive activities.
Improving Nutrition: Poor nutrition
is widespread. Most Houston area
residents and many Americans eat few
fresh fruits, herbs, and vegetables
and their health suffers. Community
gardens can teach people how to grow
the best tasting varieties of fresh,
pesticide-free produce, making
delicious, nutritious produce more
available. Community gardens
increase the chance people will eat
the targeted five to nine servings
of produce that health authorities
recommend.
Reducing Hunger: Hunger is a chronic
problem in Texas; more than half a
million people are estimated to go
without food for part of the month.
About half of these are children,
and most of the other half are
elderly or disabled. Community
gardens can help reduce hunger. With
regular work, community vegetable
gardens typically produce about 500
servings per year in a 40 ft. by 5
ft. raised bed. Fresh produce from
community gardens supplements the
canned supplies that stock the
shelves of food pantries and
homeless shelters.
Improving the Environment:
In
addition to providing the community
with nutritious food, today's
organic community gardens teach and
inspire sustainable land use. As our
population continues to move from
rural areas to urban centers, most
of our agrarian heritage has been
left behind or forgotten. Now we
have no system in place for teaching
or experiencing wise management and
use of the land we have around us.
In most Texas cities pests are too
many; water bills are too high; and
beneficial creatures are too few.
Most people do not know how to
control pests, irrigate the land or
improve the soil in an
environmentally friendly way. The
soils are poor, yet, regrettably,
organic wastes go to landfills.
Community Gardens can teach sound
land management and make ventures
into food production successful.
School gardens that complement and
enhance classroom curricula can also
serve as valuable demonstration
gardens for the surrounding
community.
Providing Income: Despite Houston's
12 month growing season for nearly
all vegetables and fruits, it may be
the only very large city in the
nation without a significant fresh
produce industry. Other Texas cities
have large numbers of unemployed
people, vast amounts of unused land,
yet few truck farmers. Community
gardens can help deal with these
problems. They can help gardeners
learn how to grow food organically
with a minimum of effort, and how to
sell their crops to neighbors, local
restaurants, and caterers who are
desperately searching for sources of
locally grown, good tasting produce.
Subscription gardening, ongoing
contract sales to a group of people,
also known as CSA (community
supported agriculture), and Green
Markets (small scale, periodic
markets with sales of produce by the
grower) are other marketing options
for gardeners who have smaller
quantities of produce to sell.
Improving Physical and Mental
Health: Health, physical exercise or
therapy are other possible aims of
community gardens. Taking care of
plants, watching birds and
butterflies, enjoying the outdoors
and getting exercise are all good
for body and spirit. Community
gardens can help people suffering
from stress and many forms of mental
and physical illness.
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