Our Research

In 2024, we completed fieldwork for “Gardening Together,” our study of urban agriculture in Rochester. This project is the first-ever comprehensive survey of Rochester’s community gardens, and will help us build more effective programs and advocate for better policy. Our team cataloged 120 community gardens, made 109 site visits, collected online survey responses, and conducted in-depth interviews with eight community garden managers. We plan to publish a report of our findings by the end of 2024.

We were blown away by the diversity and scale of Rochester’s garden landscape. Community gardens and urban farms occupy nearly 16 acres of land in Rochester, and together have over 1,200 raised beds!

This project is funded through the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation’s Environmental Justice Community Impact Grant program. We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve received funding to extend and update this research in 2025. We plan to include more opportunities for citizen-science and youth-led research.

Read the full project description here, and stay tuned!