Connecting health,health behaviour and place through the work of community gardening

Many claims have been made regarding the social and economic benefits of the recent growth in a number of countries of community gardens and households growing their own food.

Reviews of existing research suggest the potential impacts on health and the motivations for individuals becoming involved in food growing are not fully understood. Integrated qualitative and quantitative research generated findings that can inform future research into health, food growing and gardening using qualitative and quantitative methods.

Analysis of the European Quality of Life Survey (EQoL) for the EU15 countries in 2003 and 2007 reveals self reported health was less strongly associated with food growing than was expected but there was good evidence that people who grow their own food tend to be happier.

The qualitative research with community partners also highlighted that the health benefits of being involved in community food growing were taken for granted and people's motivations for involvement in food growing projects focused on identity, community development, social interaction and sharing. The study also reveals the importance theoretically of understanding that community food growing involves the 'occupation of space' through 'growing intimate publics', or what we term 'privatepublics'.

Quantitative analysis

The search of the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) website used the keywords gardening OR food production and yielded 218 hits. Data sets identified tended to fall into two groups; those capturing gardening as a physical activity, and those focused on food production in an agricultural or economic sense. No data sets were found which reliably captured the role that growing one's own food outdoors might play in influencing health and wellbeing. An important conclusion for this part of the project was just how little quantitative data was readily available to describe the relationship between health, gardening and food growing in domestic or community gardens.

The analysis of the EQoL, 2007 and 2003, did, however, reveal some important findings that can be used to inform further studies to address the gap in quantitative research into food growing, gardening and health (see illustrations page below).

Stark variation existed across the EU15 countries, in terms of who grows their own food. In 2003, the UK had the lowest level of grow your own in the EU15 at about 4%, but by 2007 its level was much nearer the EU 15 average of 14%. The UK had the fastest proportional increase in growing your own the EU15 (see Figure 1 in illustrations)

Among the EU15, older households, families and couples, those with greater financial problems and lower income, and those with poor education were more likely to grow their own (see Figure 2). However, some of these relationships were different in the UK, with age not related to growing your own after adjustment for other household and economic factors and, of particular interest, a quite different relationship to financial status and education. Growing your own in the UK is more likely to be the preserve of people with few or no money worries than those with great money worries, and more likely to be undertaken by those with high educational qualifications than with none (though this relationship was not significant once other confounders such as financial status were controlled for).

Respondent's health was less strongly associated with growing your own than was expected. In the EU15, there was little difference in levels of growing your own between those with good and poor health and in the UK, those most likely to grow were also most likely to report health problems. In the EU15, people who grew their own were more likely to have more regular contact with their neighbours, though this relationship did not survive adjustment for other potential confounders in the UK. In both the EU15 and UK however, there was good evidence that people who grow their own also tend to be happier (see Figure 3). Further research is needed to understand the mechanisms that might explain these links between happiness and food growing.

Qualitative analysis

The qualitative methods produced a series of insights on the interactions between health, well being, food growing and community gardening that can guide future empirical research and theoretical discussion. What is challenging for policy, and related research, which emphasises the physical and mental health benefits of food growing and gardening is that health was not a core motivation for many of the participants when they chose to be involved in the community food growing partner projects. For some participants, especially those involved with the community farm, the health benefits were taken for granted but their motivations for involvement in the farm focused on community development, social interaction and sharing. For some of the young women working on the Likt allotment the experience had been transformational enabling them to develop a sense of community beyond the initial 'group' and a detailed understanding of the connections between different aspects of health but their decision to get involved in the project was linked to issues of identity and the social and economic pressures facing young people. Further research to examine the health benefits of food growing will need to consider not only the before and after health characteristics of individuals but also their wider economic, social and cultural circumstances.

From a theoretical standpoint the qualitative analysis highlights the importance of understanding the public and private dimensions of communal food growing spaces. Community food growing can engage individuals in the occupation of space 'growing intimate publics', or what we term 'privatepublics', in ways which might be understood to offer a resourceful counter to tendencies towards privatising that which was previously public (e.g. urban public spaces), whilst at the same time bringing into the public domain that which was previously private (e.g. food choices). In particular the Likt project revealed how the mutually-imbricated worlds of sexuality, and women-only spaces, usually understood as private, manifest in apparently public contexts. Food growing projects also generate 'privatepublic' intimacies through the pragmatic sharing of the often private and domesticated practice of cooking and eating meals. The occupation of food growing spaces, therefore, involves individuals in mimetic, nostalgic, pragmatic and naturalistic 'modes of occupation' that relate to their food growing and gardening experiences (Church et.al. 2013). Neither public nor private seem adequate to the task of comprehending the occupation of community food growing space. The notion of Edgelands is getting closer (Farley and Roberts 2011) but 'privatepublics' signal the fluidity and uncertainty of this occupation and resonate with Haraway's penchant for intense, compound neologisms with which to resist dualisms (Haraway 1992).
Exploitation Route The co-operative relationships established between community and university partners for this project have proved fruitful and will be maintained as all partners are involved in the AHRC Connected Communities Demonstrator project that will be funded from March 2012 to March 2013 (PI Church) entitled 'Community gardening, creativity and everyday culture: food growing and embedded researchers in community transformation and connections'.

The academic and community partners have also formed beneficial links with the following connected communities projects due to run 2012-2103 researching issues relating to food growing, gardening and community engagement.