The History and Environmental Benefits of Community Gardening
Article by Elizabeth Dangerfield
Gardening has deep roots. In fact, I have wondered whether our compulsion to collect things stems from a hardwired drive to forage. Is it instinctual to keep on picking berries until enough has been gathered for a good meal and to search for the biggest and juiciest of them all? Gathering food from the wilderness was as important as hunting for most of the time we have lived on Earth because it was essential for survival.
The detailed knowledge that indigenous people had of the plants in their areas helped them not only obtain food but also medicines and other useful products. Australian Aboriginal people tended their country to encourage particular plants such as the daisy yam. Burke and Wills would not have perished in a land of plenty if they had taken the time to learn from the local people how to properly prepare the nardoo plant.
10,000 years ago growing multiple plants in one area allowed people to settle down in one place, and villages and towns grew up because of the success of gardening. Even so many people continued to forage for wild plants to eat, and still do, despite the lure of supermarkets. Medieval salads were largely made up of such food stuffs and there has been somewhat of a revival in harvesting these healthy, tasty but humble plants.
On the opposite side of the coin, gardens allowed people to escape from the harshness of the wilderness. Our word ‘paradise’ comes from a Persian word meaning ‘enclosed park’ or pleasure garden. This raises the issue of whether gardens should be a private or common good. In Shakespeare’s play, gardens are lauded as a common good when Mark Anthony remarks about Julius Caesar that in his will:
Moreover, he hath left you all his walks, his private arbours and new-planted orchards on this side of the Tiber; he hath left them you, and your heirs for ever; common pleasures, to walk abroad, and recreate yourselves.
- Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 2 at the Forum
Even in Roman days access to gardens was political.
In England access to gardens for growing food was particularly important when almost everyone lived at a subsistence level with only minimal resources. The use of land for gardening and keeping a few animals was essential for survival. In Anglo-Saxon times in Britain ordinary people, or commoners, were able to graze a few animals on commons set aside for that purpose and they were allotted plots of land to grow fruit and vegetables and maybe keep a few small animals such as hens. Allotments were usually around 50m x 5m. A free commoner villager became known as a vilien or vilain. As commoners or peasants became associated with people with uncouth mind or manners the word changed to the current meaning of villain.
In the early Middle Ages the feudal system resulted in the land around villages or manors being divided up into strips. A ‘fief’ or section of land could be granted to common people for their temporary use if they became vassals. This was a mutually beneficial exchange, whereby the commoner, who owned no land, received the ‘use of the fruits or usufruct’ in exchange for fealty to the lord. In fact many grants of land usage became hereditary.
In the Middle Ages land was usually owned by the nobility, with large areas of forests and woodland set aside for hunting of large and small game. Common people or peasants were excluded with severe penalties for poaching. This caused a lot of resentment as it altered the balance between the lord and his vassals. At the end of the 16th century common land on estates started to be enclosed for the exclusive use of the landowner. This was devastating to tenants who relied on access to common land to scratch out a living and prevent starvation. In Scotland tenants were forcibly removed from the laird’s land during the clearances. People were replaced by sheep, and many were forced to emigrate in order to keep body and soul together.
This loss of rights went on for the next two centuries. The English parliament recognised the cost this imposed on common people by passing some laws to compensate for the loss of common land by specifying that allotments of land should be attached to tenant cottages. In 1845 the General Enclosure Act made provision for field gardens to be set aside for the landless poor, a recognition of the importance of gardening in providing sustenance to ordinary people, but not a lot happened as a result. Then the Small Holding and Allotment Act 1907-1908 made it the responsibility of councils to provide allotments if there was a need.
And there was a need in the First and Second World Wars as food was in short supply and people started growing their own food in allotment gardens set up wherever there was spare space – along railway lines, in public parks, and vacant land. Dig for Victory in the Second World War resulted in 1.3million tonnes of food being produced in nearly 1.5 million allotment gardens.
Many of the old English laws to do with land, including those to do with commons and allotments, were incorporated into Australian law. In 1828, the laws of England were officially received as the laws of New South Wales. So a number of towns and villages had commons set up under English law. The village of Gundaroo, close to Canberra but in NSW, has a large common which was originally established to enable villagers to graze a milking cow but now enables village commoners to graze four head of cattle and provides a place for villagers to walk their dogs and ride their horses. Villagers can become commoners for a small fee.
Dog in Kangaroo Grass – Themeda triandra, a native grass which grows in abundance on Gundaroo Common which has not been pasture improved.
Cows grazing on Gundaroo Common, Gundaroo is a rural small village 40km from Canberra.
Many European countries had allotments available for people to rent at a very reasonable rate. In Australia, when the ¼ acre block was the norm, most people grew vegetables and maybe fruit trees in their backyard and perhaps had a few chooks for eggs and eating. I always admired the way many migrant families turned their front gardens into vegetable plots and orchards and often grew grapes over the carport. They were years ahead of Australians for whom the front garden was for show and essentially a wasted space when it came to self-sufficiency.
But of course, many people lived in apartments. If they were lucky they could access community gardens which were being set up in a number of places on the allotment basis. One advantage of allotments is that you can share tools, tips and plants. In my suburb I have a small plot in a community garden that was set up by the developers of the suburb and which is run by the Canberra Organic Gardeners Society. Plot holders have different approaches to gardening, but it is wonderful to be in the company of people who love to get their hands dirty and nurture plants. We have working bees to maintain the common areas of the garden and have hives for native and European bees. Any excess produce is donated to a charity shop for distribution to those in need. Like many community gardens there is a waiting list for plots.
Community gardens enable landless people to have the opportunity to grow their own food, especially in times of scarcity. But they also have many other benefits. They promote physical and mental health, socialising, and community spirit. They also increase our awareness of where our food comes from, the importance of nurturing the earth and an understanding that we are stewards of the land. I have just come back from a couple of weeks in the outback. The scenery was spectacular for its vastness, but plant life was sparse, and the landscape degraded due to feral animals and overgrazing. I wonder what the land would have been like if the original Aboriginal custodians had not been removed and had been allowed to look after this very fragile environment?
Brussel Sprout plant in Crace Community Garden Plot – Brussel sprouts do not travel and taste sweeter if pick fresh and young.
Bull and hardy belted Galloway cow.
Plants to provide food for bees in early spring – Crace Community Garden 2022.
Many more people now are aware that we need to nourish the land and fight back against the destruction of the natural environment both in the country and in our cities. By growing as much of our food as possible we can reduce our reliance on supermarkets and reduce waste and the miles the food has to travel before it reaches our table. We also gain control over what we are eating and can grow our food with less chemicals than is usually used by large agricultural ventures. We can also grow a mixture of plants so that our gardens are not a monoculture and encourage a variety of insects etc. When we get our produce home we can make meals from scratch and support the concept of slow food. And it should also make us ponder the value of gardens as a common good.
When you look around cities and towns there is often space that is abandoned, derelict or unused and which presents the opportunity to turn it into some sort of productive garden. Guerrilla gardeners are activists who take over empty public spaces to grow food in order to increase food security and increase the ability of the community to survive should things go wrong – like losing your job and having to live below the poverty line on the dole. Guerrilla gardeners can also make a rather dreary area beautiful and stimulating. The organisation Growing Forward is dedicated to setting up community gardens in underutilised public spaces with the aim to do free work for the community and provide free produce to vulnerable people. Each garden set-up is totally autonomous.
A well-known venture of using public land is Costa Georgiadis’ verge garden. Nature strip or verge gardens can turn a boring area into something productive and beautiful. People in the same street can come together to grow vegetables and fruit for distribution to people in need. Verge gardening means you don’t have to mow the lawn along the street; they can promote health and a sense of community and empower citizens to take ownership of making something useful out of essentially unproductive land. This is a shift from gardening as a private benefit to one of public gain. It also provides environmental benefits for birds and insects and becoming more self-sufficient in food also helps the environment.
The use of public and even private land, such as neglected or abandoned building sites, in this way, is based on the assertion or allocation of some sort of right according to Oliver Brown in the Foragers’ Year, Sept. 22, 2012. This idea of rights over land that you do not own is related to the concept of usufruct – which was a medieval concept that has persisted.
Thomas Jefferson said in 1789 that earth belongs, in usufruct, to the living
Which Wikipedia takes to mean that human beings have the right to use the earth for their own benefit and derive profit from it, but only to the extent that their actions do not impoverish the earth’s bounty for future generations – and I would add for other living things.
Usufruct is often used as a justification for foraging, guerrilla gardening and digging up the nature strip. However, in more formal terms it means a system in which a person, or group of persons, can use real property such as land for their own use when they don’t own the land. Their interest in the land needs to be sanctioned by the owner. Of course, if the owner of the land, such as the local council, does not approved of the venture things can be difficult. A local man in my suburb was threatened with legal action when he attempted to help maintain a park by removing noxious weeds and generally keeping it in good order. But no one seems to mind you picking blackberries by the roadside. In fact, in many cases local government is supportive of people developing gardens on their nature strips, although guidelines do vary from place to place.
If you want to dig up your verge or nature strip and plant Brussel sprouts the advice is to start small and before you plant anything improve your soil and talk to your neighbours. You need to think of the time it might take you to maintain the garden so it isn’t an eyesore. What type of garden to do you want – do you want to grow vegetables, herbs and fruit, encourage insects, birds and butterflies, grow flowers or have natives? A cottage garden might be lovely on the nature strip but if your hollyhocks grow 3 metres tall they many obstruct the traffic. Also growing wild blackberries on the verge might seem like a good idea except they are noxious weeds along with a lot of plants that like to escape the confines of a garden and go rampaging over the landscape. And you really should stick to plants rather than embellishing your garden with cute concrete cherubs and swinging seats. Nonetheless, if you do have a verge garden you will be sure to get lots of exercise and conversations with passers-by and improve your mental health as you commune with nature and become part of the gardening community.
Because community gardening is about using a resource you don’t actually own but is provided for the public good I think community gardening should be about nurturing the soil, plants and beneficial insects. It should be a sharing with other plot holders, those who don’t have access to fresh produce and also other living things. I think it should also be the antithesis of rampant consumerism by being on the frugal side – for example, collecting seed, growing cuttings and seedlings, swapping plants with neighbours rather than going to the nursery and buying an expensive showy plant or buying patented seeds. It should be about the conservation of old varieties of vegetables that don’t make it to the supermarket shelves by growing a diverse range of plants. It should be about sustainability in that with proper management you should be able to keep growing plants in your plot forever. And it should be about conservation by reducing the miles food is transported, reducing packaging, reducing food waste, and preserving excess food. Of course gardening and eating home grown food will improve your health. But fundamentally community gardens are based on the concept of equity – anyone should be able to grow their own food and all gardeners are equal.
Elizabeth Dangerfield trained as a zoologist and then became a science teacher and served as Secretary of the Australian Science Teachers Association. She was series editor for a secondary science text for Cambridge University Press. She was an innovative curriculum developer and worked on the first national science curriculum and became a secondary science consultant. Her work has always focussed on social justice and equity. She wrote two books for teachers on how to make science relevant to girls and other students. She worked in social justice areas in the Australian Capital Territory Public Service and also in the Commonwealth Department of Education. As a Director in the Indigenous Branch she was tasked with negotiating education targets for Indigenous students with the states and territories and reporting on outcomes to the Australian Federal Parliament. She has always had a keen interest in protecting the environment. She has written many articles for magazines on an eclectic range of issues and has also edited the Australian Humanist.