Millions of Australians are still struggling with locks, seeking comfort in gardening. For immigrants and refugees in Australia, gardening in community spaces can be especially meaningful.
But community gardens are not always inclusive. In a recent study, my colleagues and I highlighted ways in which refugees and refugees are excluded from community gardens and how this can be changed.
Community gardens are socially inclusive and everyone will benefit. Culturally diverse community gardens can not only strengthen cultural-cultural relationships, but also help develop skills to adapt to changes and crises such as climate change.
Benefits of Community Gardens
In many parts of Australia, waiting lists are too long to join community gardens, with some gardens requiring up to eight years. Advocacy groups are constantly calling for more sites and more funding to meet this need.
There are good reasons for growing popularity. They regularly list their positive effects on improved mental and physical health and well-being as they promote physical activity, greater access to nutrition, strengthening community relationships, and more.
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Food produced in community gardens helps to improve food security. During locking, these sites were essential to meet the daily needs of many who are struggling financially.
For refugees and refugees, communal gardens can be safe, safe places.
When refugees migrate to supportive communities that share a commitment to productive horticulture, immigrants and refugees can improve their own effectiveness. The ability to grow traditional foods can preserve their relationship with the rest of the country, and facilitate the settlement and migration process.
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That is why it is so important to improve these opportunities and overcome any obstacles, including those gardeners. Our research has reviewed community gardening studies around the world, and the common barriers to refugee and refugee participation focus on three key areas:
1. Physical and material properties of gardens
This includes high membership fees, easy access to gardens and unsafe land ownership.
Site design is also a problem, limiting gardeners’ self-sufficiency and the ability to produce familiar foods. This can happen in a place where there is a common plot rather than an individual, putting pressure on new gardeners to grow foods that are already familiar to existing gardeners.
Another obstacle is the lack of available space and small farmland, making it difficult to grow traditional essential crops such as maize.
2. Garden management styles
Inclusive practices often do not include misinterpretation of information in data sharing and decision-making.
For example, community gardens often rely on regular administrative meetings, but they do not take into account these different languages, cultural traditions, and unequal power relationships.
Reliance on food parks in community gardens can be a big problem for refugees and immigrants, especially newcomers. This could make gardens a substitute for more comprehensive social support programs.
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3. Ensuring special values and beauty
How we care for plants and ideas How a productive garden should look is often shaped by any cultural norm. Uniforms, well-separated high beds, weed-free and overgrown plants are often preferred by endangered councils.
Immigrant and immigrant gardening styles may conflict with such accepted promises and values. Many prefer to grow many different plants that are not accustomed to growing directly in the soil and that do not look clean but can increase biodiversity. It can also leave more space between crops to improve production.
This means that for refugees and refugees, these common, productive and culturally appropriate ways of gardening can be undermined with respect and knowledge.
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The good news is that we can make community gardens more socially inclusive. To do this, most of these volunteer groups need to invest more resources (including land and financial support) from governments and local councils to develop and manage these sites.
These resources should help refugees and refugees:
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Develop social and ecological relationships that create a sense of ownership
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They contribute to the design and management of plants in cultural and linguistic inclusive ways
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Make choices about how to convey some of their conspiracies that stimulate communication with their home country
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Participate with all gardeners to share knowledge and lessons
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The garden should not be relied upon as the main source of food or income.
Gardens are better when immigrants and immigrants are included
Community gardens are currently a key limitation for many. Coming back to COVID-normal, lessons learned from social environmental gardens can help communities better prepare for future climate change, especially climate change.
Read more: From gardening to marketing, refugees are quiet environmentalists
Rehabilitation in a different country involves ongoing adjustments to new social, ecological and climatic conditions. Adjustment to unfamiliar environments often comes with careful experimentation and trial and error, so we can all learn from refugee and refugee skills, knowledge and ways of agreeing.
When it comes to food gardens, previous research has shown that this experiment can increase biodiversity and increase nutrition due to the variety of crops grown. One example is the introduction of corn flour in many gardens across Australia. This is the basis of many African countries.
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The desire to grow traditional foods means to scratch the soil and its growth conditions as well as the plants. This allows the plants to adapt to unfamiliar conditions, which in turn become increasingly volatile under climate change. Learning how to grow tropical plants in the icy parts of Victoria or on low soil is two good examples.
In addition, gardeners from different backgrounds can improve the community’s safe, low-tech farming and pest management techniques. This includes how to use waste from traditional foods, such as Japanese gardeners’ tofu leftovers.
Bringing culturally diverse communities together makes for more meaningful relationships, but also strengthens our collective ability to adapt to changing climate instability.
The author would like to acknowledge the hopes of Jessica Abramovich and Kathy, who contributed to the research on which this article was based.