Community Gardens; Impact on Urban Communities

About the Program

Category: Parks and Recreation (Best in Category)

Year: 2020

Caddo Parish Parks and Recreation implemented a comprehensive nutrition and gardening program in 2019, focusing on an urban, low to moderate income neighborhood (Martin Luther King Jr.) considered “food desert” by the USDA within the Shreveport urban area. Food deserts are low-income urban neighborhoods that lack access to fresh fruits and vegetables due to a lack of nearby grocery stores. Over one-third of our local population calls one of the 22 food deserts of Caddo Parish home. Although these neighborhoods lack grocery stores, there is no shortage of convenience stores and fast food restaurants, where healthy food is scarce and notably more expensive. As a result, diabetes, hypertension, and other diet-related health conditions run rampant in these neighborhoods.In response to this low access to nutritional foods and relatively easy access to non-nutritional foods, Caddo Parish Parks and Recreation committed to installing a food-producing garden in Shreveport’s Martin Luther King Neighborhood and facilitating garden activities from a seed to feed process.All garden program activities (planting, maintenance, and harvesting of gardens) were managed by Caddo Parish Parks and Recreation, primarily under the care of one staff member, whose role was also to recruit and train both community volunteers, promote the garden as community space and facilitate community engagement activities. Residents of the MLK neighborhoods were also invited to join parks and recreation staff at the garden for regularly scheduled educational programming such as nutrition workshops and planting/maintenance and harvest demonstrations.The community garden provided a free source of healthy foods where there once was none, addressing both the financial and geographical obstacles of food deserts. Furthermore, this program served as a stepping stone for getting inner city youth and an urban community eating healthier, as research shows that community gardeners eat more vegetables each day than non-gardeners or home gardeners. Caddo Parks and Recreation envisions this program to be a “model program” for inner city communities with the expansion of additional community gardens in Caddo Parish.