Gardening as a strategy in building
communities
During interviews, Community Gardens clients and other stakeholders often
discussed the ways that the program had helped build local communities.
Member's of the evaluation team asked interviewees general questions about
forging new fellowships and improving local neighborhoods through
Community Gardens activities. The findings were mixed on whether the
program helped people gain new friendships. When asked in the survey
whether they had "made more friends than usual" or "learned more about
different cultures" during the past four months, gardeners were slightly more
likely to agree with the statements than members of the comparison groups
(see Table 6.1), but the results were not significant The means for
the client responses fell between "not sure (2)" and "agree 0." However, when
we asked clients their reasons for participating in Community Gardens,