IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v10y2018i1p96-d125160.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gardener Well-Being along Social and Biophysical Landscape Gradients

Author

Listed:
  • Monika H. Egerer

    (Environmental Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA)

  • Stacy M. Philpott

    (Environmental Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA)

  • Peter Bichier

    (Environmental Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA)

  • Shalene Jha

    (Integrative Biology Department, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA)

  • Heidi Liere

    (Biology Department, Reed College, Portland, OR 97202, USA)

  • Brenda B. Lin

    (CSIRO Land and Water Flagship, Aspendale, VIC 3195, Australia)

Abstract

Increasing human populations are challenging cities to grow sustainably while maintaining green spaces that deliver ecosystem services and well-being benefits. Community gardens are green spaces that provide food, community, and health benefits, but gardens often are non-permanent due to development and green space loss. Thus, investigating their significance and benefit across urban regions is critical for research and policy alike. This study investigated the role of community gardens in providing human well-being benefits across three counties in the California Central Coast—a region undergoing massive urban transformation in the last century. We measured how multiple aspects of self-reported gardener well-being varied in relation to the social opportunities of surrounding neighborhoods and the biophysical features of the landscapes in which the gardens were embedded. The results document improvements in gardener well-being through gardening across social and biophysical gradients. Gardeners are motivated by diverse reasons, varying from gardening in order to connect to nature, to gardening for improved food access, or to enhance time spent with family. Community gardens are therefore important for supporting many well-being benefits. Policies to maintain and protect gardens should prioritize neighborhoods with needs for connecting to nature and enhancing social interaction within the community.

Suggested Citation

  • Monika H. Egerer & Stacy M. Philpott & Peter Bichier & Shalene Jha & Heidi Liere & Brenda B. Lin, 2018. "Gardener Well-Being along Social and Biophysical Landscape Gradients," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-14, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:1:p:96-:d:125160
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/1/96/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/1/96/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Calcagno, Vincent & de Mazancourt, Claire, 2010. "glmulti: An R Package for Easy Automated Model Selection with (Generalized) Linear Models," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 34(i12).
    2. Laura Saldivar-tanaka & Marianne Krasny, 2004. "Culturing community development, neighborhood open space, and civic agriculture: The case of Latino community gardens in New York City," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 21(4), pages 399-412, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rositsa T. Ilieva & Nevin Cohen & Maggie Israel & Kathrin Specht & Runrid Fox-Kämper & Agnès Fargue-Lelièvre & Lidia Poniży & Victoria Schoen & Silvio Caputo & Caitlin K. Kirby & Benjamin Goldstein & , 2022. "The Socio-Cultural Benefits of Urban Agriculture: A Review of the Literature," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-21, April.
    2. Diana Harding & Kevin Muhamad Lukman & Matheus Jingga & Yuta Uchiyama & Jay Mar D. Quevedo & Ryo Kohsaka, 2022. "Urban Gardening and Wellbeing in Pandemic Era: Preliminary Results from a Socio-Environmental Factors Approach," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-15, March.
    3. Chethika Gunasiri Wadumestrige Dona & Geetha Mohan & Kensuke Fukushi, 2021. "Promoting Urban Agriculture and Its Opportunities and Challenges—A Global Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(17), pages 1-22, August.
    4. Susan Spierre Clark & Monica Lynn Miles, 2021. "Assessing the Integration of Environmental Justice and Sustainability in Practice: A Review of the Literature," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-23, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bernard W T Coetzee & Kevin J Gaston & Steven L Chown, 2014. "Local Scale Comparisons of Biodiversity as a Test for Global Protected Area Ecological Performance: A Meta-Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(8), pages 1-11, August.
    2. Hale, James & Knapp, Corrine & Bardwell, Lisa & Buchenau, Michael & Marshall, Julie & Sancar, Fahriye & Litt, Jill S., 2011. "Connecting food environments and health through the relational nature of aesthetics: Gaining insight through the community gardening experience," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(11), pages 1853-1863, June.
    3. Hartl, Barbara & Hofmann, Eva & Kirchler, Erich, 2016. "Do we need rules for “what's mine is yours”? Governance in collaborative consumption communities," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 2756-2763.
    4. Eduardo Correia & Rodrigo Calili & José Francisco Pessanha & Maria Fatima Almeida, 2023. "Definition of Regulatory Targets for Electricity Non-Technical Losses: Proposition of an Automatic Model-Selection Technique for Panel Data Regressions," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(6), pages 1-22, March.
    5. Scrucca, Luca, 2013. "GA: A Package for Genetic Algorithms in R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 53(i04).
    6. Kirsten Schwarz & Bethany B. Cutts & Jonathan K. London & Mary L. Cadenasso, 2016. "Growing Gardens in Shrinking Cities: A Solution to the Soil Lead Problem?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-11, February.
    7. Leslie Gray & Laureen Elgert & Antoinette WinklerPrins, 2020. "Theorizing urban agriculture: north–south convergence," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(3), pages 869-883, September.
    8. Scott Cloutier & Lincoln Larson & Jenna Jambeck, 2014. "Are sustainable cities “happy” cities? Associations between sustainable development and human well-being in urban areas of the United States," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 633-647, June.
    9. Ji, Yonggang & Lin, Nan & Zhang, Baoxue, 2012. "Model selection in binary and tobit quantile regression using the Gibbs sampler," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 827-839.
    10. László Kovács, 2019. "Applications of Metaheuristics in Insurance," Society and Economy, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 41(3), pages 371-395, September.
    11. Grubinger, Thomas & Zeileis, Achim & Pfeiffer, Karl-Peter, 2014. "evtree: Evolutionary Learning of Globally Optimal Classification and Regression Trees in R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 61(i01).
    12. Verónica Lloréns-Rico & Ann C. Gregory & Johan Van Weyenbergh & Sander Jansen & Tina Van Buyten & Junbin Qian & Marcos Braz & Soraya Maria Menezes & Pierre Van Mol & Lore Vanderbeke & Christophe Dooms, 2021. "Clinical practices underlie COVID-19 patient respiratory microbiome composition and its interactions with the host," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-12, December.
    13. Jean C. Bikomeye & Sima Namin & Chima Anyanwu & Caitlin S. Rublee & Jamie Ferschinger & Ken Leinbach & Patricia Lindquist & August Hoppe & Lawrence Hoffman & Justin Hegarty & Dwayne Sperber & Kirsten , 2021. "Resilience and Equity in a Time of Crises: Investing in Public Urban Greenspace Is Now More Essential Than Ever in the US and Beyond," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(16), pages 1-39, August.
    14. Guangzhou Wang & Haley M. Burrill & Laura Y. Podzikowski & Maarten B. Eppinga & Fusuo Zhang & Junling Zhang & Peggy A. Schultz & James D. Bever, 2023. "Dilution of specialist pathogens drives productivity benefits from diversity in plant mixtures," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-11, December.
    15. William Lacy, 2023. "Local food systems, citizen and public science, empowered communities, and democracy: hopes deserving to live," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(1), pages 1-17, March.
    16. Justine Lindemann, 2019. "Gardens and Green Spaces: placemaking and Black entrepreneurialism in Cleveland, Ohio," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 36(4), pages 867-878, December.
    17. John Taylor & Sarah Lovell, 2014. "Urban home food gardens in the Global North: research traditions and future directions," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 31(2), pages 285-305, June.
    18. Nicole Rogge & Insa Theesfeld & Carola Strassner, 2018. "Social Sustainability through Social Interaction—A National Survey on Community Gardens in Germany," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-18, April.
    19. Hongbo Guo & Enzai Du & César Terrer & Robert B. Jackson, 2024. "Global distribution of surface soil organic carbon in urban greenspaces," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-9, December.
    20. Lisa Cherry & Darren Mollendor & Bill Eisenstein & Terri S. Hogue & Katharyn Peterman & John E. McCray, 2019. "Predicting Parcel-Scale Redevelopment Using Linear and Logistic Regression—the Berkeley Neighborhood Denver, Colorado Case Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-16, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:1:p:96-:d:125160. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.