Urban agriculture, which includes community gardens, provides ecosystem services but is continuously threatened by the densification of cities. Picardo Farm is the oldest community garden in Seattle. Its success and popularity inspired the municipality of Seattle to develop a city-wide public program called the P-Patch Community Gardening program. We evaluated the perceptions of Picardo Farm gardeners about the benefits provided by the farm and the reasons why this community garden is so resilient. Gardeners were asked three open-ended questions and their responses were evaluated for recurring keywords regarding ecosystem services. We found that gardeners’ perceptions of ecosystem services vary, and they often underestimate ecosystem services related to regulation. We identified seven key topics from gardeners’ responses: a sense of community, placemaking, food, health, place attachment, nature, and education. Furthermore, our results indicate that, in order to achieve resilience, community gardens require public institutions to build and empower cohesive communities of gardeners and gardens need to be placed in urban areas suitable for agricultural use.
Learning from the gardeners of the oldest community garden in Seattle: resilience explained through ecosystem services analysis
Menconi, M. E.
;Grohmann, D.
2020
Abstract
Urban agriculture, which includes community gardens, provides ecosystem services but is continuously threatened by the densification of cities. Picardo Farm is the oldest community garden in Seattle. Its success and popularity inspired the municipality of Seattle to develop a city-wide public program called the P-Patch Community Gardening program. We evaluated the perceptions of Picardo Farm gardeners about the benefits provided by the farm and the reasons why this community garden is so resilient. Gardeners were asked three open-ended questions and their responses were evaluated for recurring keywords regarding ecosystem services. We found that gardeners’ perceptions of ecosystem services vary, and they often underestimate ecosystem services related to regulation. We identified seven key topics from gardeners’ responses: a sense of community, placemaking, food, health, place attachment, nature, and education. Furthermore, our results indicate that, in order to achieve resilience, community gardens require public institutions to build and empower cohesive communities of gardeners and gardens need to be placed in urban areas suitable for agricultural use.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
