Notes from the Field: Learning How to Garden

Hi, AC4D community!

We’ve had a fruitful (get it?) week of kicking off our research on how people who don’t own land or property learn how to garden.

Here’s what we’ve done so far:

Direct observations of two instructor-led group classes:

Here’s a view from when we directly observed an instructor-led class last week. To learn specific gardening skills, people sign up for hands-on experiences to fast-track

their learning. This particular workshop was focused on the basics of companion planting.

…one interview with an instructor who still considers himself to be a student:

Jay (far right), who learned

how to garden during the pandemic, has now become

a gardening and herbalism instructor to both children

and adults.

Jay attended the same companion planting workshop we did and soon started thinking of ways to introduce companion planting to his younger students this week.

…and one phone conversation with an SME who is a community garden board member.

Although we’re still in the early stages of our research, we’d like to share our findings with you. Here are some themes that have emerged so far:

Learning how to garden…

• teaches humility and grace; nature cannot be controlled, but it can be nurtured

• helps people learn how to embrace a growth mindset because it requires time, patience, bouncing back from failures and frustrations, and the ability to flex and adapt to meet the needs of changing conditions and environments

Here’s a quick glance at the rapid synthesis that led to some initial themes.

We’re excited to continue our research with three participants we’ve lined up for the next three days. Here’s who we’re talking to next:

• Someone who’s learning how to garden on land shared among members of an intentional community

• Someone who’s learning how to garden on their apartment patio

• Someone who has learned how to garden in a number of different places across the country, all on land that wasn’t his own

We’re continuing to recruit and will be reaching out directly to five potential participants and SMEs tomorrow to schedule time with them next week for contextual inquiries and in-depth interviews. These people were all leads from folks we’ve already connected with this week, so we’re feeling hopeful and optimistic about our chances of meeting with them.

In addition, we will be doing intercepts at community gardens and casting a wider net via online forums.

We look forward to learning and sharing more in this upcoming week!

Arielle Schoen + Annie Ly