THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY GARDENS IN PROMOTING SOCIAL INTERACTION

Abstract

The key focus of this research is to highlight the impact of the Community Gardens on social interaction as this topic of interest has yet to be fully explored. Community gardens offer a space that allows facilitation of leisure activities and encourages interaction within the community. With the aim of strengthening bonding and community ties among residents, National Parks (Nparks) started “Community in Bloom” (CIB) in 2005. Today, CIB has over 700 community gardens across Singapore and has engaged over 20,000 residents, reflecting the popularity of the programme. Findings revealed that not only does distance to the community garden impact on the residents’ usage of the garden, higher social interaction levels also take place at community gardens as compared to parks. Those who spend more time at community gardens also tend to interact more with their neighbours as compared to those who visit the park more at face validity. Although more respondents indicated that they go to the parks more often, it was shown that this may not necessarily translate to a higher level of interaction at parks. Quantitative results concluded that the closer one stays to the community garden, the higher the probability and frequency of usage of the garden. It also highlighted that the frequency and intensity of social interaction that takes place at community gardens is statistically higher than parks. Furthermore, residents who visit the community gardens more as compared to parks tend to have higher levels of social interaction with their neighbours. One of the limitations of this study was that it could not explore all the comparable community gardens and parks in Singapore and their impact on social interaction among residents due to the extensiveness that go beyond the scope of this paper.