Root of the matter

Community gardening: what does it really mean to grow together?

- By Hafsah Hafeji

Having worked as a communit gardener for nearly five years, firstly in my home city of Leicester followed by Hammersmith Community Gardens and now at Spitalfields City Farm in London, it's interesting to stand back and reassess what is happening with the movement now.

The phrase 'community garden' is fairly new, but people have been growing food together for hundreds of years, evolving from the urgent need for food during times of crisis to a modern movement for sustainability and community building. In the UK, community gardens grew from allotments set up in cities to provide affordable fresh fruit and vegetables to the local area during World War Two. Similarly, in the US 'victory gardens' were created during the World Wars, but their history goes back even further to the 1890s when in response to the economic recession, Detroit became the first city to use empty pieces of land for gardening programmes aimed at recently unemployed industrial workers.