Refugee Gardens
Refugee garden programs are one of the most recent incarnations of the urban garden. Harking back to a century’s worth of social agendas in earlier programs, they are a descendant of relief gardens, horticultural therapy gardens and job-training gardens. True to their ancestry, they aim to bring nature to the city; more specifically to refugees who are perhaps not acclimated to urban living. In some cases, refugee gardens serve educational purposes, but their main goal seems to be build community across diversity.
Such programs began appearing in the late 90s and early 2000s, as federally-supported modes of promoting assimilation by new arrivals. Often located within or near public housing developments, refugee garden programs tend to focus on delivering social and psychological benefits to gardeners. Though food security is an undeniable benefit for participants, the organizers of such programs usually initiate them to:
improve mental health
promote physical activity
increase opportunities for social interaction
instill a sense of personal pride and confidence
celebrate cultural tradition
promote peaceful relations in the greater community
Since new refugees are often not empowered to the point of self-organization, the two case study garden programs I present are philanthropic ones—developed by a “garden champion” and supported by volunteers. Though these two cases somewhat resemble the paternalistic urban garden model from the earlier part of the century, it is worth noting that bottom-up style programs have arisen from more established refugee groups; I am aware of at least a few Vietnamese and Hmong gardening programs that were community-driven. By this nature, they are completely different from the ones I present here.