Abstract
Considering that community members continue to garden in and near environments impacted by pollutants known to negatively impact human health, this paper seeks to characterize the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of a gardener and elucidate their perception of soil quality and environmental responsibility, awareness of past land use, and gardening behavior. Via semi-structured interviews with community gardeners in the Boston area (N = 17), multifactorial motivations associated with gardening as well as ongoing environmental health challenges were reported. Gardeners are knowledgeable about their garden’s historical past and are concerned with soil quality, theft, trash maintenance, animal waste, and loss of produce from foraging animals. Study findings directly inform the field of environmental health exposure assessments by reporting gardening duration, activities that can lead to incidental soil ingestion, and consumption patterns of locally grown produce. This information combined with an understanding of a gardener’s intrinsic and extrinsic motivations can be used to develop urban agricultural infrastructure and management strategies, educational programming, and place-based environmental public health interventions.
Highlights
Participation in community gardens provides many advantages—from reducing the cost of foods [1,2] to improved cardiovascular health [3,4,5] and mental health. [6,7]
Sections are divided by the seven following categories: gardener demographics, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, recommended governance for environmental health safety, concerns in their garden and neighborhood, awareness and understanding of historical land use, and exposure assessment - activities in the garden and consumption patterns
Authors highlighted the major findings that arose from interviews that would inform urban agricultural infrastructure and management strategies, educational programming, and place-based environmental public health assessments and interventions
Summary
Participation in community gardens provides many advantages—from reducing the cost of foods [1,2] to improved cardiovascular health [3,4,5] and mental health. [6,7]. Participation in community gardens provides many advantages—from reducing the cost of foods [1,2] to improved cardiovascular health [3,4,5] and mental health. [6,7] These motivations can contribute to an improved health profile among urban gardeners, and community gardens can be viewed as a place-based strategy to address public health challenges, such as health promotion and environmental exposures. Gardens are an “example of a community-based environmental change that transcends age, ethnicity, race, income, and education, and provides an important example of a place-based strategy that can strengthen and sustain neighborhoods and improve residential health across the lifespan” [7]. Public Health 2019, 16, 494; doi:10.3390/ijerph16030494 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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