Greening the urban environment and cultivating communities
Hatherly, Janelle (2009) ‘Beyond the garden walls: Greening the urban environment and cultivating communities’ was first published in the proceedings of BGCI’s 7th International Congress on Education in Botanic Gardens in Durban, South Africa 1-6 November 2009.
It examines the role of botanic gardens in the urban environment especially as agents for social change and community building. It shares some of the lessons learnt over the first nine-year journey of ‘Community Greening’, an innovative outreach program established by the Education Unit of the Botanic Gardens Trust in Sydney in 2000. I have added some slides from the PowerPoint presentation.
Janelle Hatherly 2021
Abstract
Community gardens have long been a successful feature in community renewal projects. Beyond greening the urban landscape, community gardening builds social cohesion and develops community networks. People who might never visit botanic gardens are given the opportunity to gain an understanding of plants, recycling and sustainable horticultural practices. This presentation will examine the role of botanic gardens in the urban environment, not only as contributors to green spaces but as catalysts for social change and community building.
The focus will be Community Greening, an educational partnership established by the Botanic Gardens Trust in Sydney (the Trust) with Housing NSW (HNSW). This outreach program assists disadvantaged communities develop communal gardens primarily in public housing estates, on Council land, in churches or in schools.
Since its inception in August 2000, the program has gone from strength to strength and Community Greening has assisted well over 150 disadvantaged communities develop communal gardens throughout NSW. Over 20,000 participants have received horticultural training and advice from Trust education horticulturists during their 1,500 sessions in over 1,000 garden visits. In the last twelve month it has spawned an offspring program called Youth Community Greening.
Introduction
For many years until its commercialisation, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney displayed the Wollemi Pine in a cage. This was the first Wollemi ever, in fact, to be planted in the ground. This drew attention to this living dinosaur and one of the world’s rarest plants. The Wollemi Pine was discovered as recently as 1994 in the Wollemi National Park just 150 km from Sydney – Australia’s greatest urban population of over four million people. Yet, despite an eye-catching enclosure and the pine’s high media profile, it was not unusual to see children run up to the enclosure with excitement, look inside and exclaim “Mum, there’s nothing in here!”
This reaction highlights the general attitude that plants don’t matter to most people and the fact that urbanisation has desensitised many of us to our natural heritage. Plant blindness is the inability to notice plants nor to recognise their importance to the biosphere and to humans.
According to Jane Tarran, current social attitudes towards nature1 include:
Nature haters – nature is messy, threatening and needs to be controlled.
Nature neutrals – comfortable in areas without nature.
Tamed nature – yards, high density camping grounds & motorised outdoor recreation.
Renewal in nature – periodic contact with nature.
Love of & dependency on nature – wilderness dwellers.
Botanic gardens cater for all the above attitudes and provide opportunities for immersion in the natural environment in an otherwise urbanised existence. They provide an attractive green backdrop for social interactions. Gardens with pockets of remnant bushland assist people to experience ‘real’ nature while still in control. Idealistically botanic gardens are places for rejuvenating the human spirit in accordance with biophilia – a hypothesis proposed by Edward O. Wilson. He postulated that humans subconsciously seek connections with nature and other living things.
For those of us who work in botanic gardens, our challenge is to provide visitors with meaningful engagement with plants as well as peace and tranquillity. By educating people about the importance of plants to life and the need to conserve them and their habitats, we help the public value the natural world and adopt sustainable lifestyles. However, many people find it difficult to visit botanic gardens for a variety of reasons – distance, lack of transport, financial or time constraints. For botanic gardens to be of service to the whole community, efforts need to be made to go beyond the walls.
Taking the message to the people
Outreach public programs provide an excellent opportunity for botanic gardens’ staff to come face-to-face with residents out in the community. By taking place where the people live, local environmental issues can be addressed and, as relationships build, the community comes to realise that botanic gardens are interesting and relevant to them. However, special strategies are required for delivering outreach programs.
In the case of the public who visit our gardens, visitor research gives us their demographics, reasons for visiting and even a good understanding of their attitudes and values, but the community outside the walls presents greater challenges. How does an organisation like a botanic garden promote appreciation, understanding and knowledge of plants, their conservation and importance to the population to a public of myriad interests, cultures and beliefs, ages and educational backgrounds? The answer lies in working within established frameworks in known communities and establishing partnerships.
Outreach programs delivered in schools enable effective learning to take place throughout the community. Schools sit at the centre of community life, both physically and socially. Young children discuss their lessons with family members and teachers talk about school highlights when they socialise; many parents and citizens are involved in school activities and committees. In a small country town, a well-planned school program can reach a significant proportion of the whole community. School-based programs are effective because the target audience is clearly defined and the programs can be tied to well-established curriculum frameworks.
The Botanic Gardens Trust in Sydney (the Trust) manages four estates – two in the heart of Sydney, a cool-climate garden at Mount Tomah in the nearby Blue Mountains and a predominately native plant collection on the Cumberland Plain in the southwest of Sydney.
The Trust has been taking its educational programs beyond these gardens’ walls since the early 1980s when community education staff conducted a touring program to schools called RBG goes West. Children were introduced to weird and wonderful plants, helped to green up their school grounds and their parents were assisted with their gardening queries. Trust staff came face-to-face with the broader community, environment groups and local governments and together they tackled local environmental issues … and implemented sustainable practices along the way. Community links were strengthened as people came to appreciate that botanic gardens were relevant to their everyday lives.
Closer to home the Trust set up an annual outreach Arbor Day program with inner city schools. Once again, the strategy was to work with an identified audience tying environmental messages into established curriculum frameworks. For about six weeks before Arbor Day, the last Monday in July, Trust education horticulturists worked out the garden design with children and school staff and helped them select plants for learning purposes. On Arbor Day itself, every child and teacher planted a small tree or shrub as part of the new landscaping. Ongoing contact with the students, staff and local community was maintained through the establishment of school garden clubs.
To reach home gardeners, the Trust created the opportunity for the horticultural industry to form non-exclusive strategic educational alliances with us. For the last five years we have been able to further deliver our environmental messages through Eden Education2, a partnership program with Eden Gardens, a commercial garden centre in suburban Sydney.
Two community greening initiatives
In 1999 the Trust decided to explore the increasing trend in communal gardening as a way of promoting environmental stewardship in disadvantaged areas. After studying similar outreach programs offered by the Brooklyn and New York Botanic Gardens, the Trust became involved with Sydney’s public housing communities.
In August 2000 a formal partnership was set up with Housing NSW (HNSW), the largest owner of urban land in NSW comprising 70,000 hectares. The environmental education program called Community Greening was spawned to build social capital and promote communal gardening especially in disadvantaged communities in urban and regional NSW. Both agencies operate state-wide and the aim of the initiative was to encourage residents in social housing estates and associated school communities to take ownership of their local environment, develop an understanding of sustainable horticulture and make friends with people from a diversity of backgrounds.
HNSW provided funding so Trust education horticulturists could do their work beyond the walls with HNSW Regional Coordinators, other government agencies, businesses and their local community. Arriving in a dedicated identifiable vehicle with donated plants, pots, seeds and other gardening supplies for the communal gardening project, the Trust staff are welcomed and encouraged to provide horticultural advice and environmental education.
Eden Gardens is a major supporter of the programs providing about $50,000 worth of plants annually. Rather than destroying ‘past-its-best’ retail stock, Eden Gardens initially, and now other nurseries, make it available for community groups who are not in a position to buy plants.
The program has grown steadily over the past nine years and over that time has helped over 200 disadvantages communities connect with nature. Currently there are 174 Community Greening projects up and running, in planning or awaiting development. The aims of the program are to:
improve health and community resilience
green and renew the urban environment
give a helping hand to communities in need
increase gardening skills and employment opportunities
promote recycling and sustainable lifestyles
increase community ownership of public spaces and
encourage the community, especially children and young people, to value the natural environment.
With regard to the last point, Community Greening helped set up 26 community gardens in schools and 22 school garden clubs by building on the experiences of running RBG goes West and Arbor Day celebrations. Kids today face many challenges for the future, including finding their identity in an uncertain and changing world. It became evident that so much more could be done with/for children (0-14 years old) and youth (15-24 years old). It is a well-established fact that early positive intervention in troubled young lives can arrest and turn around negative attitudes and behaviours.
Thanks to funds raised through the Trust's Foundation – Youth Community Greening, an offspring program was born in 2008. Youth Community Greening is an environmental education program targeting urban and rural youth with the most need, throughout New South Wales.
Its aims are to:
assist the neediest young people in society
build self-esteem and youth resilience
create opportunities for young people to connect with nature
increase youth ownership of public spaces
develop gardening skills and enhance employment opportunities, and
green the urban environment and promote sustainable lifestyles.
In its first year, an additional 27 schools were added to the program and a School Garden Teacher In-service up skilled 82 teachers from 50 disadvantaged schools. Youth Community Greening has proved so popular that 10,000 students have benefited from 250 sessions with Trust educational horticulturists now working with 68 schools and youth programs. A student Expo at the Royal Botanic Gardens is planned for November.
Starting small with one part-time education horticulturist, Community Greening and Youth Community Greening now employ four full-time Trust education horticulturists. A short video highlighting these programs can be found on the Trust and HNSW websites3.
Elements of a successful community program
If botanic gardens are to do anything of consequence beyond their garden walls, then they must work with local community, Council and businesses and other State government organisations towards a common goal. Partnerships – both formal and informal – make this possible.
Partnerships create a working environment of mutual trust where decision making, management, benefits and costs can be shared. Forming partnerships has additional relevance in the current political and economic climate where most organisations are being asked to do more with less. By coming together for a common goal, desired outcomes are achieved more efficiently or effectively while all partners still fulfill their individual missions.
In order to build community capacity, the community must be empowered and allowed to decide what they want to do. If a community is not interested in a program, or it is imposed on them from above, then it will not work. Through the experience of a decade of Community Greening, we have learnt that to build community engagement involves:
supporting the community champion/dynamo/spark. There is generally one individual in the community who is highly motivated and keen to implement the idea. If that person is supported and encouraged then the rest of the community is more likely to become involved.
delivering on promises and not over committing. Community respect and trust are built this way and small successes breed involvement.
taking excursions to beautiful botanic gardens. Inspirational standards are set when the community ‘plays at your place’. This also reduces their sense of constant intervention by authorities in their lives.
holding regular garden planning and management meetings. This gets the dialogue going and the community comes up with the ideas. By involving representatives of all community groups, or at least consulting them, the project is more likely to be accepted and not vandalised by non-participants.
Gardening as a community serves many purposes. The communal gardens that work best are the ones that are more than just beds of plants. They include shaded areas, art works, BBQs etc. and are places where people come together to socialise. Garden settings relax people and give them a break from the harsher realities of daily living. Community gardeners are more likely to be tolerant of differences and accommodate these by coming up with their own set of rules and regulations as to how their community garden will operate and what they expect of each other.
Good outreach programs attract funding; however, this can and does take a long time to achieve! If programs are well-received and are of real value to society, then organisations and benefactors are more likely to give money and in-kind support. And most significantly, the community as a whole is happy to give the most precious commodity – their time and interest.
The most important element of any successful community program is that it is underpinned by a learning ethos – providing positive esteem and meaningful engagement. Learning by doing comes naturally with horticulture. By doing, the community can ask for guidance when they need it.
Training sessions by skilled educators can then be tailored accordingly. One size never fitted all. As educators we always seek feedback, going so far as to hand out evaluation sheets, so that we can improve our own skills. This builds everyone’s esteem. A non-learning situation is one where we provide training that we think they need. This is a recipe for failure. It is interesting to note that programs run within botanic gardens involve a top-down approach (designed to contribute to the planned work of the organisation) whereas the best outreach programs are community owned and driven from the bottom up.
Those of us involved in botanic education always marvel at how easy it is to get kids excited about plants and gardening. Gardening is hands-on and truly interactive and can be done by people of all ages, backgrounds, social status, interest levels and abilities. The rewards and sense of achievement are instant – (the satisfaction of successfully planting something) and ongoing (watching it grow and produce flowers or fruit). If the key to education for sustainability is to be ‘futures focused’, then what could be more optimistic than undertaking a garden project? Imagining the future and planning for change – whether it is next week, next season or next year4.
Conclusion – an optimistic future
Governments the world over are embracing strategies to green the urban environment and make cities more aesthetic and sustainable places to live. Visionary architects are coming up with building designs that incorporate plantings so that gardens cover the equivalent footprint of land that their new buildings will extract from nature. Urban planners are developing green corridors through suburbs to link native habitats, provide cycling and walking routes and green spaces for public enjoyment. And the interest in, and the benefits of, communal gardens are on the increase.
With inspirational ideas such as these, and commitment from all kinds of decision makers, the stage is set for open and effective communication that results in a greener urban landscape. By bringing together community, government and businesses there are triple bottom-line benefits – for society, the environment and the economy. Botanic gardens’ educators should be proud to be involved in the process.
References:
1) Urban Forests Forum Dr Jane Tarran University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), and Philip Hewett, Newcastle City Council http://www.science.uts.edu.au/des/StaffPages/JaneTarran/jane_tarran.html
2) Eden Education at Eden Gardens http://www.edengardens.com.au/
3) Community Greening www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/education/community_greening and www.housing.nsw.gov.au/.../Community+Greening+Program.htm
4) Community Gardens as a Platform for Education for Sustainability Linda Corkery, Effective Sustainability Education: What Works? Why? Where Next? Linking Research and Practice 18-20 February 2004, Sydney, Australia