The Green and Gold Garden: Growing Gratitude

By Dr. Cynthia Zutter, Anthropology Professor and Ashley Stoltz, Bachelor of Science, MacEwan University

Picture in your mind a ripe watermelon, still on the vine, with bright green stripes on its skin, nestled among leaves on fragrant brown soil. You pick it up, slice it open, and take a bite, savouring the sweetness of the fruit as a little juice drips down your chin. You suddenly feel a swell of gratitude toward the plant itself, the earth and rain and sun, and your own tender dedication that made this summer treat possible—after all, you spent months growing this melon from just a seed.

When we grow food on a piece of land, feelings of appreciation and connection grow alongside it—and fostering these precious caring emotions in communities and populations may be the way we secure the future well-being of our planet.

My memories of gardens are grounded in my babcia’s (Polish grandmother) backyard. No room for grass or trees, the yard was a lush interface of vegetables and raspberry bushes, always laden with fruit. It was easy to get lost in the beauty and productivity of it all. From this living refuge in the midst of an urban center, I built my career on learning how we, as humans, have created, modified, manipulated, and transformed our environment into cultural landscapes, some beautiful and some disastrous. As an environmental anthropologist, I have experienced and studied landscapes that were devastated by livestock in Iceland, shrub tundra where berry patches were family-maintained treasures in Labrador, and ultimately, a thriving urban garden in the city where I live—the Green and Gold Community Garden in Edmonton, Canada.

This small community garden boasts a bold slogan of being “a local garden with a global impact” (Green and Gold Community Garden, 2022). The garden has had a partnership with the Tubahumurize Association since 2009, which is a non-profit organization in Rwanda that supports marginalized women (Tubahumurize Association, 2015). The garden volunteers all work together to grow fruits and vegetables, sell them at weekly markets, then send all financial proceeds to Tubahumurize.

The first time I visited and volunteered at the garden over a decade ago, my childhood memories were revived and my curiosity piqued. What is an urban community garden? How does this space create a healthy and sustainable connection with the earth, to others, to the community? Who are these volunteers from all ages, representing a diverse community, and generously devoting hundreds of hours to tending and cultivating this space together? Why are they giving so much of their time and energy to support women who live an ocean away? These were the questions I hoped to answer.

I designed a project in collaboration with the Green and Gold Garden. The purpose of the study was to examine the intersection between human health and the environment by highlighting the benefits of urban agriculture, sustainable food sources, and communal green spaces. With the support of a small grant, a wonderful colleague, and an eager student research assistant, we sought to capture and understand the health, wellness, and caring behaviours that flowed through our garden. To do this, we conducted surveys and interviews with volunteers and customers of the Green and Gold Garden, hoping to understand why they care so much about this garden and why they returned year after year, putting hundreds of hours of their time and energy into it.

Our time with the interviewees was memorable. They told humorous and touching stories, and from these stories we came to understand why they cared about the health of the land they lived on. Everyone earnestly expressed a shared belief that the garden had created a positive feedback loop where they cared for the land and, in turn, their lives were enhanced. We noted this was evident in three different ways: firstly, their physical health improved through doing exercise and consuming tasty, organic fruits and vegetables; secondly, their social health was enriched by meeting new people and working together as an effective team to achieve a common goal; and thirdly, their mental and emotional health blossomed. Interviewees used words like beauty, peace, rejuvenation, safe, satisfaction, accomplishment, and meaning to describe the way they felt while at the garden.

Simply put, volunteers and customers thought the garden was good for them. It was an urban space of wellness, where their social, physical, and mental health could thrive. Because of the health benefits they personally experienced, people wanted to see the garden continue into the future—older volunteers often expressed gratitude to younger ones for caring about, and taking responsibility for the continued existence and success of the garden. There was a strong culture of caring for the land through stewardship, where volunteers engaged in sustainable land management practices like composting, organic growing methods, and local food production. They may have been initially motivated by self-interest, but the result was that they cared more about preserving and prioritizing the health of the land and environment after participating in the garden. It gave us hope that these nascent feelings of love for local land were the start of a larger, more inclusive love for the planet. Perhaps once people have firsthand knowledge of the tangible, personal benefits of environmental activism, their scope of caring can be widened more readily and global change can become more tenable.

This approach of highlighting the individual health benefits of caring for the environment is valuable because the number one concern for people across the entire globe is their health and their family’s health (Bailey, 2022). If people become aware that their health is directly related to the planet’s health, they may be inclined to act more pro-environmentally. Therefore, whenever we talk about health, we should always consider the interconnectedness of planetary and human health. When we discuss our health in day-to-day conversations, we should reflexively think of the environment as well, and explicitly mention it. Start telling everyone you know that health is defined as “a sustainable state of equilibrium or harmony between humans and their physical, biological, and social environments that enables them to coexist indefinitely” (Porta, 2018). By continually reminding others that caring for the climate is important to us, we can make the topic of care for the planet more salient and important to the people in our lives.

Since human activity is adversely affecting the climate and directly contributing to climate crises, the way we engage with the environment must change dramatically if we are to maintain a liveable ecosystem on the planet. Of major concern is how to create sufficient societal concern and care for the environment among large populations. How can we encourage populations to deeply consider the environment’s health in their daily lives? How do we create healthy communities that can effectively work together to push for systemic changes from governments and corporations? One way to do this may be to spread messages that appeal to the personal benefits of environmental conscientiousness. Tell people in your life, over and over, that green spaces are good for their body, for their family’s health, and for their emotional spirit. Encourage the people in your life to get more in touch with local food systems and the land—create strong feelings of connection and gratitude to the green spaces in your community. Throughout our lives, we have known no better place for these feelings to flourish than in a garden.

We feel honoured to be sharing this garden’s story with you, and we invite you to consider which stories you want to become a part of.

References

Bailey, P. (2022). Ipsos Global Advisor. Earth day 2022: Public opinion on climate change. https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2022-04/Ipsos-Global-Advisor-Earth-Day-2022-Report_1.pdf

 Green and Gold Community Garden. (2022). About Us. https://www.greengoldgarden.com/

Porta, M. (2018). A dictionary of public health (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Tubahumurize Association. (2015). Food for thought. http://rwandanwomencan.org/food-for-thought/