This is a guest post by Allison Paisner.
How can local leaders create a community-building activity that helps citizens make healthy food choices and get outside more? Gardens may be the ideal answer.
While you may not have immediately jumped to the same conclusion, consider that gardens are a valuable resource, providing a good source of nutritional local produce, an opportunity for community engagement, and symbiotic environmental stewardship efforts.
In my travels to urban gardens throughout the city of Jerusalem last summer to conduct food security and community participation surveys, I found the interdependent benefits of locally grown foods too tempting to ignore. Even with the severe water shortages inherent in a desert climate, the proliferation of gardens and edible landscaping in Jerusalem allows cheap access to fresh produce and helps to eliminate food deserts. Whether this is accomplished through a private venture, a municipal undertaking, or even participation in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), gardens offer rewarding personal and community experiences as well as health and environmental benefits.
From a health perspective, growing your own food or participating in a CSA puts you in control of what’s fueling your body – you choose the seeds (for all those non-GMO lovers), and you control the pesticides (or lack thereof). Gardening can even be a form of moderate cardiovascular exercise.
In Jerusalem, community-wide urban gardens are run by volunteers or non-profit organizations such as Hand in Hand, and they often offer the fruits of their labor to the public in a very literal sense. Private garden owners donate extra produce to religious institutions or schools such as Mizmor L’David, with some even selling their surplus. Water for the community gardens’ drip irrigation systems is generally provided and paid for by the municipality. One garden run by the Max Rayne Hand in Hand Jerusalem Bilingual School brings students and their families, of both Jewish and Muslim faiths, together for garden work days to achieve a common goal and vision. Whereas crops such as olives, cactus fruit, almonds, pomegranate and figs differed slightly from those found in the more temperate U.S. climate, I was surprised to find that these Jerusalem gardens boast large yields of peppers, tomatoes, onions, eggplants and even corn.
I was able to experience urban agriculture first-hand in Jerusalem, but municipalities across the US – as well as NLC’s Sustainable Cities Institute – are no stranger to gardens and best practices. A growing number of cities across the nation are already promoting the growth of urban agriculture through direct community engagement by passing new zoning policies and by creating Sustainability Plans and local food networks. So this year, instead of stocking up on frozen or artificially low-calorie, low-fat products, try to discover the resources and opportunities available in your neighborhood for locally-grown fresh produce. You might be inspired to participate in a community garden – or even start one of your own!