Economic and Environmental Benefits of Urban Gardening

There is no set definition of “urban gardening,” although it usually refers to the use of any available green space in urban areas to grow food. The goal of urban gardening (also not set in stone) is “to achieve maximum development with minimum resource consumption and environmental impact to ensure the well-being of both humans and the Earth.”

History of Urban Gardening

What we consider an urban garden now may have been considered the “family farm” by the first humans to plant seeds on the earth. The Industrial Revolution brought longer work hours, however, leaving less time and energy to grow one’s own food.

Increase in urban hubs around industrial centers reduced the amount of land available for growing food even more; the spread of residential housing into suburban areas increased the time to get to work, thereby reducing the time available for the “luxury” of growing one’s own food even further.

The renewed focus on the importance of urban gardening in the late 20th century may have begun with one person in the neighborhood being sick and tired of looking at an “eyesore”---a public lot is strewn with trash--and recruiting friends and family to clean it up.

When what remained looked like a promising piece of land, those individuals took buckets, gloves, and shears to turn it into a mini-farm, planting whatever seeds were available in the local flower shop or grocery store or leftover from last night’s dinner.

Such early efforts in urban gardening initiatives were most often made by people who knew what it was like to depend on such gardens for nourishment. Thus, they were often created by new immigrants.

One such community gardening initiative “grew” into Mill City Grows, an urban farming organization in Lowell, Massachusetts. This group started when a small group of volunteers started moving dirt and clearing trash and weeds from a small corner lot. Their neighbors thought they were “crazy.”

They changed their minds, however, as the garden started taking shape. Drivers pulled over to watch the transformation. Residents of a local homeless shelter came by to help. Neighbors chatted about the gardens they grew when they were young, and those chats grew into friendships.

In short, it’s amazing to see the effects a small corner lot can have on a community, in this case by transforming it into an “urban garden”  you can strengthen a sense of community within a neighborhood.

Types of Urban Gardening

The term “urban gardening” has been used to describe the efforts of an individual or family growing food for personal consumption on land they own or lease as well as to groups that take over abandoned land in slums and alleyways or public lands in parks or in the countryside and grow and distribute their harvest in a common and collective way.

Collective farms have appeared in diverse environments where participants were likely to eat what they produced and see improvements in their health and wellbeing.

An analysis of the impact of community gardens in a variety of settings may lead legislators to devise policy strategies to promote local food gardens—as was done by the government of Denmark several years ago.

Despite the increasing interest in supporting local community gardens, however, policymakers have been slow to pinpoint specific objectives, activities, and target populations to study the potential benefits of these gardens on health and well-being.

The Importance of Urban Gardening: Key Benefits

Some people see gardening as a hobby or as a relaxing activity. The importance of urban gardening, however, goes far beyond the needs of the individual.

Economic benefits

Urban agriculture can be a source of income for gardeners and reduce family food costs. Being in the neighborhood, the urban gardener can save the garden’s “customers” the cost of traveling out of the neighborhood for fresh fruits and vegetables.

They can also reduce healthcare costs by helping out in the garden for exercise and by encouraging gardening groups to plant the most nutritious foods possible (greens, carrots, squash, cabbage, cauliflower, etc.) in their geographic region.

A well-organized urban gardening collective can support the economic growth of lower-income communities by providing job training--not just for agricultural jobs, but also for personnel management, bookkeeping, communications, and so on. 

Environmental benefits

Two key threats to health and wellbeing in crowded urban areas involve sewage and heat. Urban farmers help counteract these problems in at least two ways. By cultivating the land, they improve its ability to retain rainfall, preventing rainwater from overloading sewer systems and polluting waterways after a storm.

By introducing vegetation to predominantly cement-covered environments, they keep cities cooler. They also attract pollinators—especially bees and butterflies—to ensure another healthy, productive growing season.

By bringing fresh produce close to the homes of garden users, they reduce the amount of fossil fuel that is burned to transport fruits and vegetables over longer distances by truck, thereby helping to keep the air a little cleaner and prevent climate change.

Social benefits

Indeed, the removal of cross-cultural barriers is one of the many social effects of community gardening. People of various cultural backgrounds—and age groups and political persuasions—may discover through common food preferences or approaches to growing food—or simply by spending time with each other in the garden and sharing their life stories--that they have more in common with each other than not and may become more tolerant of each other and others like them.

They may also become more supportive of each other when disaster strikes, as when Mill City Grows offered emergency “farm shares” to their community during the COVID-19 pandemic, with safety protocols in place.

Community Initiatives That Promote Urban Gardening

The desire to transform decaying urban landscapes into fields of blooms and healthy produce has been expressed worldwide. Denmark, for example, recently approved legislation granting “allotment gardens” (plots of land made available by the government for individual and non-commercial gardening or for growing food plants) permanent status to enhance other healthy living policies.

New York City, as part of its 20-year stormwater management plan, introduced a new zoning code, known as the “Zone Green” code, which allows rooftops to be transformed into roof farms. An example of this is the Brooklyn Grange, a 0.61-hectare rooftop farm constructed atop an 11-story building in the former Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Companies can play a significant role in advancing community initiatives, particularly in the area of urban gardening, to revitalize urban spaces and foster community well-being. 

A prime example of corporate engagement in such efforts is ICL Group, which has actively supported urban gardening initiatives worldwide.  ICL Group, one of the largest fertilizer companies in the world, supports such urban gardening initiatives in many communities across the globe. In Israel, they supported the dream of the country’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, to create a flourishing desert. ICL employees joined members of the local council in Yeruham, a city in southern Israel, to promote partnerships among residents, local authorities, entrepreneurs, and employees in the business sector to make that dream come true.

They started with community gardens in neglected spaces, with the primary goal of creating “good neighborly relationships between the residents” of that town. Their employees have also worked with local municipalities in Brazil to plant grass and plants in a community garden in Sao Jose dos Campos and grass, flowers, and trees in a garden adjacent to a public school.

ICL Group is an example of how a company, by working together with local authorities and residents, has been able to spearhead and maintain gardening projects that target the specific nutritional, economic, and social needs of each community.