Community gardens are thriving in New Zealand with a whole new wave of revisitation. Benefits of community gardens include:

• Community: friendships, enhanced sense of community, family bonding, building neighbourliness
• Increasing feelings of safety, creating community pride, promoting sharing. Individual: stress relief, education, exercise, independence, skill development, pride, food security, and
• Economic savings. Environmental: reduction in energy costs, creating biodiversity, increasing pervious surfaces, improving
• Environment - air and water quality, reducing driving trips, beautifying the environment and promoting sustainability.
• Food Security: inexpensive local organic food fosters independence among vulnerable groups, local food
• Production becomes possible for community gardeners.
• Health: foster connections with natural processes, create opportunities for physical exercise, relaxation, and stress relief.

Gardening is a wonderful activity, encompassing benefits for the body as well as the mind. As well as being a great source of physical exercise, there are obvious benefits to be had from eating the fruits of one’s labours (literally), from the health benefits to the savings and food security that comes from growing one’s own fruit and vegetables.

The wide-ranging and positive outcomes of community gardens are increasingly being recognised by policy makers and service providers because of the significant gains from collective activity – from places or events where people of different ages, cultures and capabilities get together for a common creative purpose. A community garden provides ongoing and frequent opportunities for making meaningful connections between people form all walks of life, through the sharing of knowledge, skills and conversations. As Auckland City Council’s website says:

"Flowers grow in flower gardens, vegetables grow in vegetable gardens, and people grow in community gardens" (see here for more details)

The following articles cover various community gardens:

1) The success of the Hartcliffe Health and Environment Action Group in Bristol, UK (click here)

2) The Ranui Community Gardens in Waitakere (click here)

3)  Ecomatters Environment Trust community gardeners' website (click here)

4) The local community's efforts towards McLaren Park Community Initiative, in Henderson South, Waitakere City (click here)

5) The work of Operation Green Thumb Inc, a city-wide group operating in Wellington (click here)

6) The hugely successful revamping of disused land by Ceres, in Melbourne (click here)

In addition to the information in these articles, more on community gardens can be found at the websites for the Christchurch City Council, Transition Towns and Lyttelton.