EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Garden as society: exploring the values embedded in community garden aesthetics

Azucena Lucatero and Madeleine Fairbairn ()
Additional contact information
Azucena Lucatero: University of California
Madeleine Fairbairn: University of California

Agriculture and Human Values, 2025, vol. 42, issue 3, No 42, 1933-1951

Abstract: Abstract Despite the benefits of ecological complexity, tidy and ecologically simple landscapes are the hegemonic aesthetic norm in many rural and urban settings. In rural agriculture, tidy landscapes of perfectly spaced, weed-free rows are often taken as an indication of farmer skill. Meanwhile, suburban yard owners face cultural pressures to maintain immaculate lawns through intensive lawn care regimens. In both contexts, an aesthetic of tidiness can contribute to dire ecological outcomes. Community gardens have potential to break the mold of tidiness. They are influenced by both agricultural and suburban aesthetic lineages but also by alternative agri-food movements, which place a higher value on sustainable practices, opening possibilities for alternative aesthetic outcomes that support greater ecosystem health. Drawing on a photovoice project and semi-structured interviews with community gardeners in the California central coast, we investigate the values that drive community garden aesthetics. We find that tidiness remains the hegemonic aesthetic, upheld by formal and informal governance mechanisms as well as personal taste. However, an alternative aesthetic, which we term “wildness,” provides a counterpoint to tidiness that can contribute valuable ecological resources to community gardens. Ultimately, however, we find that garden tidiness is not necessarily mutually exclusive with a sustainability orientation and wildness was not always the product of sustainability values.

Keywords: Community gardens; Urban agriculture; Aesthetics; Values (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10460-025-10745-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:42:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s10460-025-10745-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10460

DOI: 10.1007/s10460-025-10745-w

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture and Human Values is currently edited by Harvey S. James Jr.

More articles in Agriculture and Human Values from Springer, The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-08-28
Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:42:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s10460-025-10745-w