Garden access and barriers for low-income community members

Gardening can be an important source of fresh food for impoverished households, yet people experiencing food insecurity in the United States often lack access to any form of garden. Although research on community gardening is plentiful, research on other forms of gardening, such as resi­dential and container gardening, especially among rural populations, is scarce. This project investi­gates the garden-related experiences of food pantry customers in rural northern Minnesota, in the Bemidji area. We address gardening in its many forms, including residential, container, community, and other types of gardening. We focus on the spe­cific barriers to garden access, and propose several solutions to these barriers, as suggested by study participants. Over one-third of food pantry customers dur­ing the study period responded to a questionnaire administered in the waiting room of the food pan­try (n = 205, N = 562). Although 91% of respond­ents stated that they wanted to garden, and 85% had gardened in the past, only 31% were active gardeners. This equates to 60% of questionnaire respondents who wanted to garden but were cur­rently not gardening, and is 22% of the total custo­mers to the food pantry during our study period. Although it may be easy to assume that these indi­viduals simply do not want to garden, our study found many specific reasons that prevented these otherwise motivated individuals from gardening. Participants offered suggestions to relieve these barriers, some of which are in the control of local policymakers. Our findings showcase the motiva­tion, knowledge, and experience of rural, low-income individuals and encourage policymakers to take this into consideration when trying to promote gardening.