Reading Green Wellbeing Network

Food4families are a member of RGWN which is a group of community gardens and horticultural therapy groups around Reading who collaborate to provide green wellbeing information and activities. Find out more on the RGWN website

Study into the Health Impact of Community Gardening Places and Urban Spaces

Summary

Starting in 2016 Food4families have partnered with the University of Reading to set up a research project that examines the impact of foodgrowing on the residents of Reading.

It is an observational study over a period of four years across four distinct community gardening sites and urban neighbourhoods.  

The study mainly involves getting information from participants who sign up for the gardening project, before and after they have started gardening. By comparing this information, we hope to understand the impact of urban community gardens on the physical and mental health of people who take part in gardening activities, and also the effect that urban environments may have in mitigating these health outcomes. 

The four activities that contributed most to wellness were healthy eating, exercise, getting out in nature
and being part of a group. The most frequently mentioned advantages of taking part in the F4F programme was the chance to meet up with other people, the opportunity to learn new things, getting a share of the produce and having family activities.

For further infomation please click on 

/userfiles/files/Way2Health_final_lo.pdf

This report is a Whitley Researcher and University of Reading production including Aneta Banas, Naomi Lee, Sonia Duval, John Ord - Whitley Researchers and Sally Lloyd-Evans and Lorna Zischka of the University of Reading.

Key researchers:

Richard J. Nunes, PhD Lecturer in Real Estate and Planning

Dr Aileen Ho, Department of Psychology

Dr Senjuti Manna, School of Real Estate and Planning

We are looking for gardeners as well as non-gardeners to sign up to the study or to act as a control group. For more information contact us and we will respond as soon as possible.