Plotting identity, place, and culture: the community garden vernacular landscape

Sheppard, RebeccaThe community garden cultural landscape, from early American communal agrarian plots to the twentieth century Victory Garden movement, is part of American history. This historic cultural landscape continues to play a role in American identity today. At the turn of the twenty-first century, a combination of factors has caused the expansion of community garden landscapes; these factors include increasing interest in civic agriculture and environmental sustainability, influenced by economic recession. The community garden cultural landscape expresses the changing culture of food, agriculture, and man's relationship with land in history and today. The community garden is a model example of vernacular landscape. A distinct type of cultural landscape, the vernacular landscape is formed by everyday human activity, rather than by action or design imposed upon people, resulting in an authentic sense of place. The suburban community garden cultural landscape demonstrates a synergistic relationship between the land and people, expresses a wide breadth of human needs and desires, and represents greater society and its social interactions. Vernacular landscapes are defined by these very qualities; thus, the community garden is an archetypal vernacular landscape. Cultural landscapes, most especially vernacular landscapes, provide understanding of the social and cultural attitudes of communities. Suburban community gardens are archetypal vernacular landscapes that benefit three levels of society: the individual, the participating community, and the wider population. For the individual, community garden landscapes provide food, beneficial interaction with the land, creative self-expression and personal fulfillment. For the community, such landscapes create and preserve diverse social opportunity within suburbia and an authentic sense of place. For society, community garden landscapes preserve food, land and civic culture. Discerning suburban community gardens as vernacular landscapes reveals their significance in suburban society. The community garden cultural landscape is paradoxical. As a land-use, community gardens have a long history in America, but individual community gardens are often impermanent. The contemporary suburban community garden landscape is simultaneously an agricultural and recreational landscape; this paradox has land-use and policy implications, which directly affect the creation, longevity, and security of community garden landscapes. To understand the role of the community garden vernacular landscape in suburbia, this investigation conducted cultural landscape studies of two gardens in northern Delaware: the Bellevue State Park garden, a contemporary community garden landscape with a nearly 30-year history, and the Emsley property, a former community garden that operated between 1975 and 2004. The case studies sought to understand both the land and people at each site. Vernacular landscape study methods revealed the land and space of the community garden landscape. Traditional research methods including survey, expert interview, and oral history interview explained the people and culture. Archival documents, promotional and educational ephemera, contemporary media and secondary sources supplemented the study of the community garden cultural landscape in history and today.University of Delaware, Department of Urban Affairs and Public PolicyM.A