Gardening in an urban farm: A way to reconnect citizens with the soil

Abstract

Simultaneously perceived as places of agriculture, of nature, and of social ties, urban collective gardens and farms enable city dwellers to immerse themselves in gardening, to recover forgotten skills, to learn from nature and the environment. They reinstate the soil as a feature of the city by making it visible to the urban population, to whom it is often unknown. In this article, we focus on urban gardeners’ representations of the soil in a city of south of France. These representations were analyzed through the lens of the relationships that gardeners develop with the soil as an element of nature. Our results highlight relations where the care ethic is central. They suggest that the practice and the extension of agroecological urban gardening, by placing city dwellers in physical, skilled contact with the soil, promise a reconfiguration of citizens’ relationship with soil.