During the World Wars and Great Depression, community gardens became popular all over the world as people were fighting to find ways to support themselves. Nationally, community gardens have many benefits, especially areas struggling with access to food and nutrition. In areas of political unrest, community gardens increase food sovereignty and allow citizens to separate themselves from reliance on government support. They also can redirect profits directly to the community rather than continuously support big businesses. Community gardens all over the world have shown improvement in physical and mental health, education, community involvement, crime reduction and safety, and cultural exchange.

Community gardens are recognized nationally for the benefits they offer to communities and municipalities across the United States. Research conducted on a national level revealed that community gardening has a lot of positive social, ecological, and economic impacts on communities. In New York, property value has increased on parcels of land used for community gardening because of the benefits it poses to the surrounding community. Five states around the country have launched urban gardening initiatives at prisons, which provide inmates valuable life skills and career building opportunities. In Ohio, only 18% of inmates that participated got re-arrested, so it's safe to assume the positive impacts these programs have on prisoners continue to flourish and extend their reach to produce benefits for their own communities once they're released. Community gardening has been nationally recognized for it's ability to improve food security, increase property value, improve mental health, increase biodiversity, and bring communities together.

In 2016, four notable campus based organizations completed a study to target food insecurity and lack of resources for students. Overall, they found high numbers of students with food insecurity, 48% of students in the study were lacking access to food in the past 30 days. Grand Valley State University acknowledged this study by creating Replenish, a pantry of resources (food and hygiene products) for students who need it. Another important aspect of community food access is GVSU's Sustainable Agricultural Project (SAP). The SAP is a campus-run farm that aims to promote sustainable farming practices, cultivate leadership, and expand community. The SAP works with Replenish to donate fresh produce to food-insecure students.

Join our team as we teach you tricks to propagating your favorite herbs like basil, rosemary, sage, lavender, and more!

We want to share simple, healthy dorm-friendly recipes you can easily prepare. Classes will be led by our very own nutrition specialists here on campus.

Learn about all the critters we find in our gardens, and how you can prevent the ones who harm your plants.

This is a simple rectangular garden plot that could be implemented in the Back Four on the Allendale campus. The Back Four is an optimal place for a garden project, about 700-800 residents live within these four buildings, so the garden would be seen by a lot of people very frequently.

Splitting the bed in half could give students the opportunity to interact with their garden without even noticing. To promote student engagement with the garden and interaction with peers, we can create interesting, walkable paths through the plots, as pictured above.

Spacing out numerous, smaller plots in any specific area is another strategy that could be used to provide memorable commutes to class. If students are constantly interacting with the garden and are made aware of the positive impacts it has on the GVSU community, there will most likely be more incentive to participate.

The areas we have highlighted for this project are various grass patches around north campus. There will be very little impact to the surrounding environment, and it would provide vegetative diversity to "Freshmen Land"

The relationships fostered when tending and caring for a garden are irreplaceable. There is value in harvesting plants you grow. Offering the opportunity to students who find themselves cooped up in a dorm provides volunteers with the chance to be a part of something larger than themselves.

As outlined in the materials and costs sections, this project poses little financial burden to SAP. Many of the materials could be sourced for low cost, or even a donation to SAP.