Well, this sparked more interest than I thought. Cool! Thanks for your note, Lenny. Very interesting! The numbers from the 1990 and 1996 ACGA surveys are 1237 and 1906 community gardens for New York City, respectively. That's far, far higher than any other city, with two exceptions in 1996: 1318 for Newark, NJ and 1135 for Philly.
A sampling of other numbers include Boston (113 and 148); Minneapolis (101 and 536 (!)); Seattle (30 and 46); San Francisco (74 and 131). Asheville NC reported 21 in 1991, but currently I know of no more than 8 there, and that number may be high. Both surveys drew on self-reported data from ACGA members. Some cities (Los Angeles, Atlanta) with community garden programs are not even mentioned. Lenny's point about New York is well taken – I suspect his number of about 1000 is more accurate. Lenny has a very good perspective for 'callibrating' such results, since he was a leader in the GIS survey of NYC gardens a couple years back. So, how many community gardens are there in the US? I agree we (ACGA, and each of us as local activists) would be well served by a reasonably accurate number, to help establish a sense of how popular community gardens are across the US. So far, we seem to have 4 data 'mines': Self-administered surveys, usually done by ACGA or National Gardening Association; individual, informal observations such as Lenny's for NYC or mine for Charlotte and NC; GIS-based research (NYC, Portand, Seattle and Vancouver (I think)...did something like that happen in Saint Louis?); and statewide surveys by Extension or some other group interested in CGs. We have one underway now in North Carolina. We don't have a serious independent academic survey, however. Might be interesting for a geographer? My guess is that a self-reporting survey will give us no more accurate data than they have done in the past, however we administer it (through ACGA's website or via Survey Monkey, for instance). It might be interesting to gather that data, but we need information from other sources to sort through the survey responses and come up with something closer to at least ballpark accuracy. Two other things: Old sore point: ACGA uses a very broad definition of community garden, so that a community garden does not need to grow food, and can be something completely different, such as a street tree tending project or a curbside flower bed. Don't get me wrong, these are cool projects! Very cool! And they can build community. But, is that the definition of "community garden" we would use, and that people are asking for? The 1990/1996 definition was: "...land set aside for community members to grow edible or ornamental plants. The land may also include active or passive recreation space or other amenities." Also, ACGA began as an "organization of organizations" with responsibility or interest in community gardening programs. I wonder if it is time to revisit that 'organizational ecology' and see what organizations are out there doing gardens. Locally, for example, we have Park and Recreation and a church-based group, Charlotte Green, that sponsor the majority of our community gardens. Then we have other 'independent gardens'. Starting with the organizations, we might at least get some idea. For our part in Charlotte, we've got a team of college kids working to find all the community gardens in the county, right now, as part of their geography class at UNC Charlotte. It's interesting, there's both a flurry of grassroots activity, much school garden activity inspired in part by Slow Foodies, and some surprising new players, such as big developers. Many new community and school garden organizers (particularly in the big developer class) don't seem the least bit interested in collaborating or even communicating. In fact, some seem to feel that they _want_ to reinvent the wheel, it's more fun and avoids having to think about bummers like sustainability, insurance, land tenure, empowering gardeners - you all know. Don Charlotte, NC www.urbanminsitrycenter.org ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2009 11:40:21 AM Subject: Community_garden Digest, Vol 711, Issue 2 Send Community_garden mailing list submissions to [email protected] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected] You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Community_garden digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: How many community gardens in US? (Lenny Librizzi) 2. Re: Market codes for irradiated, GMO, organic or regular produce (Diana Liu) 3. Health concerns over Obamas' swing set mulch (Diana Liu) 4. Re: How many community gardens in US? (Steven Garrett) 5. Re: The miraculous Moringa Tree (Steven Garrett) 6. Re: How many community gardens in US? (Diana Liu) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 10:07:12 -0400 From: "Lenny Librizzi" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Community_garden] How many community gardens in US? To: "Don Boekelheide" <[email protected]>, <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" New York has nowhere near 2000 cgs. 600 Greenthumb, Land trust and miscellaneous and maybe 3- 400 Housing Authority sites. I'd say 1000 is a better estimate for NYC. Lenny Librizzi Council on the Environment 51 Chambers Street room 228 NY,NY 10007 212-788-7927 phone 212-788-7913 fax [email protected] www.cenyc.org _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
