Allotment Gardening Research Articles

MEASURING SOCIAL–ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS BEHIND THE GENERATION OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

The generation of ecosystem services depends on both social and ecological features. Here we focus on management, its ecological consequences, and social drivers. Our approach combined (1) quantitative surveys of local species diversity and abundance of three functional groups of ecosystem service providers (pollinators, seed dispersers, and insectivores) with (2) qualitative studies of local management practices connected to these services and their underlying social mechanisms, i.e., institutions, local ecological knowledge, and a sense of place. It focused on the ecology of three types of green areas (allotment gardens, cemeteries, and city parks) in the city of Stockholm, Sweden. These are superficially similar but differ considerably in their management. Effects of the different practices could be seen in the three functional groups, primarily as a higher abundance of pollinators in the informally managed allotment gardens and as differences in the composition of seed dispersers and insectivores. Thus, informal management, which is normally disregarded by planning authorities, is important for ecosystem services in the urban landscape. Furthermore, we suggest that informal management has an important secondary function: It may be crucial during periods of instability and change as it is argued to promote qualities with potential for adaptation. Allotment gardeners seem to be the most motivated managers, something that is reflected in their deeper knowledge and can be explained by a sense of place and management institutions. We propose that co-management would be one possible way to infuse the same positive qualities into all management and that improved information exchange between managers would be one further step toward ecologically functional urban landscapes.

Women (re)construct the plot: the regen(d)eration of urban food growing

The British allotment is in the process of transformation. From a traditional provision made to male active and retired workers, it is becoming, by degrees, embourgeoised and more socially diverse, with many more women entering allotment gardening. At the same time, growing community gardening activity is giving women in low income families the opportunity to provide fresh, and culturally relevant, food for their families. This paper explores the meaning of this gradual gender transformation of urban food‐growing spaces with regard to its social, aesthetic and environmental impact and looks at the implications of this both on and off the plot.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF ALLOTMENT GARDENS IN POLAND1

ABSTRACT Collectively, Polish allotment gardeners represent the largest land managers or users in Poland. Policies that today dedicate the use of this often prime city space reflect a history of social stability that spans the political and economic transformations of the 19th, 20th, and earliest 21st centuries. In 1997, the gardeners celebrated 100 years of formalized urban allotment food production that is rooted in Poland's agrarian past and efforts to move rural labor into urban settings without an infrastructure to meet their basic needs. Poland's allotment garden arrangement provides an important, though fraught, model for food security and urban open space policy. The system combines local and national government policy, administration and management by a non-governmental organization (NGO), and deeded private use by individual gardeners. Today this arrangement produces ongoing tension among the stakeholders and a contentious, even healthy, debate about the private and public uses of urban land.

JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES OF ALLOTMENT AND COMMUNITY GARDENING

ISHS XXV International Horticultural Congress, Part 13: New and Specialized Crops and Products, Botanic Gardens and Human-Horticulture Relationship JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES OF ALLOTMENT AND COMMUNITY GARDENING

Rewriting the Plot: Sustaining allotments in the UK and Japan

In the search for a model form of allotment garden in the late 1980s, capable of absorbing surplus farmland while sustaining the capacity of the land to support agriculture, Japanese experts rejected the UK allotment, which was perceived to be of low status and in decline, in favour of the German Kleingarten. This paper suggests that it may be time to reconsider the UK experience, in the light of subsequent moves to rewrite the image and practice of allotment gardening in the UK within the local sustainable development agenda, and the problems which the Japanese version of the Kleingarten model has encountered in the changed economic circumstances of the 1990s.