Community Gardeners' Perspectives on Race Relations

Community gardens are settings in communities that provide a myriad of health-related benefits, however, one of the central themes in the literature on community gardens is the importance of the social context of the setting, which is known for engendering positive interactions between different cultural and racial groups of people. Researchers have begun to explore how ethnicity, culture, and race broadly manifest in diverse community gardens, but lack a critical examination of race relations. The purpose of the study was to understand and describe how community gardeners conceptualized race relations in their racially diverse community gardens. The study used a qualitative grounded theory methodology to provide a rich description of gardeners’ lived experiences and understandings. Eleven participants from different racial/ethnic backgrounds who were active gardeners in racially diverse community gardens in Chicago were interviewed. Semi-structured interviews and participant observations were used in facilitating the constant comparative method of qualitative data analysis. The narrative that emerged illustrated how participants’ understandings of different racial groups in the garden changed over time since being involved in the setting. Participants first recognized racial stereotypes in the garden, then through teaching and learning around garden activities formed strong family bonds, and then finally came to understand race in a contextually colorblind way. The emergent themes described a social process that both contributed to the literature on the social context of community gardens and elaborated on several shortcomings of race relations theories used in the literature.