The Multifaceted Benefits of Community Gardening: An Exploration

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of the multifaceted benefits associated with community gardening. It explores the positive impacts on health, such as providing access to nutritious food and promoting physical activity, alongside the environmental advantages, including improved water filtration, reduction of soil erosion, and enhancement of biodiversity. Furthermore, the essay highlights the social benefits of community gardening, emphasizing its role in fostering social interaction, community building, and a sense of belonging. The essay draws on various research studies to support its claims, demonstrating the significant role community gardening plays in urban environments and its potential for sustainable development and community well-being. It also provides a comprehensive list of references for further research.

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BENEFITS OF COMMUNITY GARDENING
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Introduction
Community Gardens refers to where people come together to grow a variety of fruits, flowers,
herbs and vegetables within the community gardens. They manage this by renting the individual
and the shared plots of land within the community gardens. In most cases, they are usually run
by neighborhood associations, churches, community agencies, clubs, private land owners, non-
profit making organisations and even by municipalities.
Community gardening offers a variety of benefits to people. These opportunities vary for both
food production and the recreational gardening in underutilized spaces. The following are some
of the benefits under specified categories
a. The health benefits
The community gardens provide both nutritious and fresh food to the low both the low and high-
income people in areas where fresh and nutritious food are not available. For instance, a research
of the different stores in in the three low income zip codes in the Detroit found that 20% had a
small amount of food baskets that are healthy based on the pyramid of food. (Pothukuchi 2003)
Another study that was conducted by Lackey and Associates have shown that the community
gardeners are their family eat more nutritious food than the non-gardeners (Bremer et al, 2003)
Consequently, people who live with the gardeners tend to eat more vegetables and fruits on the
daily basis. In a survey that was once conducted in Michigan where community gardening is
practiced, about 18% of those that were interviewed from the non-gardener’s communities
consume vegetables and fruits for less than 3 times a day while the figure was about 35% on the
other side of the households of the gardeners. The research also found that those practicing
community gardening also tend to consume more servings of vegetables and fruits on every day
than the non-gardeners (Alaimo et. al., 2008).

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Several researches have thus indicted community gardens are such natural areas that offer many
health benefits that ranges from one category to another for human beings. Being in such areas,
do provide recovery from the mental fatigue, boosts the general outlook of an individual and this
helps people to cope with and recover from stress, improve one’s ability to recover from the
mental illness and injury, improve productivity and finally restores concentration in a person
(Maller et al., 2005).
Gardens also form areas of recreation and exercise which is another greater health importance to
human beings. Gardening is also regarded as a moderate to heavy intensity physical activity and
has been associated with numerus significant heath factors such reduction of cholesterol and
systolic blood pressure in the body (Armstrong, 2000).
Community gardening also forms the base of physical exercise and through this, people get to
spent much time gardening than doing other forms physical exercise.
.
Environmental Benefits
Community gardening have contributed to many such environmental benefits which varies from
one level to another. The gardens have a great impact in the filtration of the rainwaters and keep
the rivers, lakes and the ground water clean (Bremer et al., 2003). This has also been significant
in the reduction of soil erosion and water run off which intern lessens flooding and saves the city
money in the urban paces (Bremer et a, 2003). This has also been applied in the prevention of
flooding and thus improving the environmental outlook.
Regulation of heat and improving the biodiversity are some of the other environmental
importance of community gardening. This is contributed by the fact that the plants and
vegetations grown produces important substances such as cool oxygen that are further released

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into the atmosphere. For instance, in a research that was conducted in UK about the importance
of the green gardens in the ecosystem, 80% of the participants felt that the gardens enhance the
beauty and good look in the community. In urban regions, the spaces are uniformly distributed
and accessed are extremely limited to near low-income neighborhoods populated by the
minorities.
Social Benefits
Community gardening is considered to be a one of the social activity that involves sharing of the
problems, negotiation, problem solving and other skill related matters among the gardeners. This
is usually achieved when people interact within those gardens and share their views and
apprehensions concerning problems and good ideas. Community gardens are known to be
specific places where people come together and interact with each other for a common purpose
and therefore there exists a sense of mutual benefit among those people.
The community gardening can thus be used the creation of the a sense of the social belonging
among the people that are already practicing it for the specific purpose.
Conclusion
To conclude, community gardening is a significant practice in any given environment and which
should be practiced by people from time to time. As seen from the above, the benefits are
influential to all the living things in any ecosystem.

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References
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