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Community gardens are of increasing interest to scholars, policymakers, and community organizations but there has been little systematic study of community garden management at a broad scale. This study complements case study research by revealing shared experiences of community garden management across different contexts. In partnership with the American Community Gardening Association, we developed an online questionnaire. Results from 445 community garden organizations across the US and Canada reveal common themes as well as differences that are particularly significant across different organizational sizes. The findings suggest that organizers see multiple benefits, and respondents confirmed recent expansion of gardening efforts. Analysis then focuses on challenges, which are closely related to garden management. We address garden losses as well as challenges to routine operation. Key challenges included funding, participation, land, and materials. We developed a typology based on organization size, to reveal distinctions between small organizations (serving 1 garden), medium-sized organizations (2–3 gardens), large organizations (4–30 gardens) and very large organizations (31 or more gardens). These categories shed light on different needs for funding, land, material, and participation. Together, this analysis suggests that community gardens can be linked through the work it takes to sustain them rather than specific causes or outcomes. Community gardens can be better integrated into local food systems through analysis of how people involved with this work navigate these shared processes.

Since the 1890s, providing places for people to garden has been an inventive strategy to improve American urban conditions. There have been vacant-lot gardens, school gardens, Depression-era relief gardens, victory gardens, and community gardens--each representing a consistent impulse to return to gardening during times of social and economic change. In this critical history of community gardening in America, the most comprehensive review of the greening of urban communities to date, Laura J. Lawson documents the evolution of urban garden programs in the United States. Her vibrant narrative focuses on the values associated with gardening, the ebb and flow of campaigns during times of social and economic crisis, organizational strategies of these primarily volunteer campaigns, and the sustainability of current programs.

Winner of the Environmental Design Research Association's 2018 Book Award How can we design places that fulfill urgent needs of the community, achieve environmental justice, and inspire long-term stewardship?By bringing community members to the table, we open up the possibility of exchanging ideas meaningfully and transforming places powerfully.

Since the 1890s, providing places for people to garden has been an inventive strategy to improve American urban conditions. There have been vacant-lot gardens, school gardens, Depression-era relief gardens, victory gardens, and community gardens--each representing a consistent impulse to return to gardening during times of social and economic change. In this critical history of community gardening in America, Laura J. Lawson documents the evolution of urban garden programs in the United States. Her narrative focuses on the values associated with gardening, the ebb and flow of campaigns during times of social and economic crisis, organizational strategies of these primarily volunteer campaigns, and the sustainability of current programs. [from publisher description].

It is interesting to learn that the school-garden movement, which flourished at the turn of the twentieth century, was spurred by unflattering comparisons of education in the United States and Europe, where the educational innovations that captured the imaginations of American reformers included Frederick Froebel's Kindergarten, Lawson also points out that, at the turn of the twentieth century in the United States, the parents of many urban schoolchildren had rural backgrounds and that many of the parents shared a concern that loss of contact with rural (agricultural) nature would damage children in some way.