Gardening brings many personal benefits. But it can also bring benefits within a community. Just as it can increase personal resilience, so too it can increase resilience within a community – by bringing people together, and increasing the number of beneficial interactions within the system to make it more stable and able to withstand the test of time. 

Here are just some of the amazing ways that gardening builds community by bringing people together:

Communal Gardening Experiences

Community gardens, allotments, garden-share schemes, public parks, and other collaborations can bring people from diverse walks of life together. Strengthening the ties that bind communities together and helping people overcome divisions by finding common cause. In a garden, all are equal and no one is left behind. A garden can be a restful and relaxing place, where mental health challenges can be overcome, rifts healed, and confidence in oneself and in others can be regained.

Community Greening/ Adaptation

Our changing climate, extreme weather events, droughts, wildfires etc. all add strain to a community. But through gardening and growing, we can help to mitigate and adapt to global and local changes. When a community comes together to green a city, or take on other restoration or improvement projects, they are better able to come together to tackle problems, rather than being further divided.

Seed and Plant Swaps and Sharing

Individual growers and gardeners within a community can make a difference on their own. But when they come together they can create truly resilient and sustainable systems for their local areas and those who live there. One great way to do so is through swapping and sharing seeds, cuttings and plants.

Tool Banking

Communities can also come together through sharing the tools required for gardening. Creating a tool bank, or a kind of library for gardening tools, can make it easier for all those living in a particular area to get growing

Compost Collaboration

Gardeners can also collaborate in other ways. For example, they can work together to create compost or other materials to help boost and maintain fertility in growing areas. Communities can become closer when they work together to generate the materials needed by all.

Time Banking

One challenge for many who would like to garden more is finding the time in our busy modern world. Time banking is one strategy that communities can use to come together and support one another. People donate time (to help someone in their garden, for example) and receive someone else's time in return.

Sharing Food & Other Garden Produce

Of course, community growers can also come together when it comes to sharing the food that is grown. Just as family ties are strengthened when the family eats together, so too a communities ties can be strengthened when people harvest, prepare, cook and eat food together. And, of course, community food growing schemes strengthen a community by eradicating food insecurities and making sure that everyone living in a particular area has access to fresh, local, seasonal food.