About Our Project
In this interdisciplinary project, researchers from anthropology, biology, and medicine will investigate how urban community gardens contribute to health, wellbeing, and biodiversity in Chicago communities. We explore the possibility that gardens serve as vital social and ecological communities; and that gardeners use them to rebuild, support, and maintain both old and new cultural practices. We use methods from each of our fields, including participant observation, participatory action research, plant and animal observations, garden mapping, and geographic information systems (GIS), to gather data about people, place, plants, and animals in community gardens.
Summer 2017 is a pilot season, but these are the questions we eventually hope to answer with our research:
This project is part of a larger, longer-term effort by Field Museum researchers to understand urban health and wellness. For more information, please see http://urbanwellness.fieldmuseum.org/
Summer 2017 is a pilot season, but these are the questions we eventually hope to answer with our research:
- Does biodiversity and composition of plant and animal communities vary among Chicago gardens? If so, how and why?
- Do urban gardeners help to maintain dwindling and threatened wildlife species in Chicago?
- How do different communities in Chicago use urban gardens to take control of their sense of wellbeing?
- What emotional, health, social, and/or environmental benefits do participants attribute to the practice of gardening?
- To what extent does gardening assist in creating or restoring a sense of grounded identity, history, or place for those living in “blighted” environments or new and unfamiliar environments?
- To what extent are particular crops, seeds, plants, foods or medicinal plants important in supporting a sense of wellbeing?
- To what extent do gardeners link their own sense of wellbeing to environmental wellbeing?
This project is part of a larger, longer-term effort by Field Museum researchers to understand urban health and wellness. For more information, please see http://urbanwellness.fieldmuseum.org/