Abstract
Considerable research has examined the changing values and governing approaches of urban community gardens since the nineteenth century in the United States. However, few studies exist for community gardens located in postsuburban contexts. This study reports the findings from six case studies of community gardens in southern Orange County, California, that asked, how are the themes of garden governance and an overarching garden ethos elaborated at community gardens? Our findings suggest that gardens manifest one of three governance approaches which we labeled anarchic, democratic, and corporate. In addition, we found two values frameworks or garden ethoses among these gardens. One is a community ethos oriented toward realizing values promoting greater community engagement, and the other is an individualistic ethos oriented toward promoting the value of gardening as an independent activity for each gardener in their plot. We argue that just as gardens in the inner city have been sites to address urban problems, gardens in postsuburban environments might also address perceived shortcomings in postsuburban regions. Our findings also suggest that community gardens, particularly in newer suburban developments, reflect a shift in the utopian visions of postsuburban planning away from a consumerist lifestyle to a newer one that enables access to nature and sustained social connections among residents.
Highlights
Urban community gardening in the United States began at the end of the nineteenth century, when community gardens were created for poverty alleviation and city beautification (Lawson, 2005)
Research Question To better understand the role of community gardens in postsuburban southern Orange County, our study is guided by the research question: how are the themes of garden governance and an overarching garden ethos elaborated at postsuburban community gardens in southern Orange County? We address this question through a qualitative comparative case study of six southern Orange County community gardens
Our study investigated how community gardens in postsuburban regions can be characterized by a range of governance approaches and different sets of gardening values
Summary
Urban community gardening in the United States began at the end of the nineteenth century, when community gardens were created for poverty alleviation and city beautification (Lawson, 2005). Over this history, the values that lie behind urban community gardens have evolved during different periods, such as performing one’s patriotic duty during wartime, and, more recently, expressing values of selfreliance, civic engagement, and sustainability. The values and governing characteristics of community gardens in newer, postsuburban cities, defined as multicentered metropolitan regions that grew out of earlier suburban regions to become culturally and economically independent from the older urban core (Kling et al, 1991), have not been investigated extensively. Through the exploratory analysis of six cases, this report aims to illuminate the types of community gardens in postsuburban cities with a particular emphasis on their value orientations, which we call a “garden ethos,” and their governance approaches, as these were the two dominant themes for the cases in our study
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