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Allotment Garden ‐ Organic Garden: Approaches to encouraging the greening of urban areas

Abstract

Allotment gardens are a traditional and popular form of urban gardening that enables urban residents to experience nature, gain social contact, and produce vegetables. Participation in traditional allotment gardens has the potential to impact the local environment and the health and food buying habits of the gardener, depending on the production philosophy and practice. This project seeks to understand the drivers for particular management concepts for urban gardening, and the motivations for, and barriers to, adopting particular gardening practices: especially organic gardening. On this basis, strategies for supporting organic gardening will be developed.

Detailed Description

The project will be carried out in four Swiss cities: Basel, Lausanne, Luzern, and St. Gallen. It is based on four modules:

  • Module 1 is the selection of the case study garden associations in the four cities. It includes an assessment of what education is offered to gardeners.
  • Module 2 is the development of an explanatory theory to explain the relationship between knowledge, attitudes and behaviours using a combination of existing scientific literature and qualitative interviews in the target cities.
  • Module 3 is a quantitative study to verify the answers gained in module 2. The aim is to ask gardeners from each city using a standardised questionnaire.
  • Module 4 involves development of strategies to encourage environmentally friendly gardening practices. The strategies will be refined in stakeholder workshops in the case study associations and the final outcomes will be publicised in the case study cities.
Financing/ Donor
  • BAFU
  • Bioterra
  • Schweizer Familliengärtner-Verband
  • Cities: Basel, Lausanne, Luzern, St. Gallen
FiBL project leader/ contact
FiBL project staff
FiBL project number 35087
Date modified 12.11.2019
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