Advantages and Disadvantages of Community Gardening

Gardening isn't something new to us. People, both in rural as well as in urban areas, have been found indulged in farming. Some did that for commercial purposes and some did that to grow herbs to help produce medicinal plants. Others did that for the beauty purposes of the area. So, history is abundant in the knowledge about gardening. Earlier, a few decades ago, in villages, people would grow vegetables in the boundary of their homes to meet their daily meal needs. This type of gardening would provide benefits not only to the households in terms of money but also in terms of wholesome nutrition. It is because they would use manure instead of fertilizers to grow their vegetables making it organic food which is high in demand now a day because of their unavailability.

Then started a trend which helped to spread awareness of planting food in the society as a whole. Community gardening brought people together belonging to diverse ethnicities. People get together to grow different vegetables and fruits. It not only helps them understand how important it is to grow food especially in times when the challenge of climate change is hovering over humanity at large.

It has tons of benefits. First off, people in this age are apparently connected like never before but also distant like they were never before. So, to bridge the gap, one of the best productive way was to get the people together for some cause which might connect them. This is one way. Secondly, while working people get to know each other by socializing and talking to each other. Not only this, it strengthens the communities. People find it as an opportunity to learn from each other.

Innovation sprouts from such activities. People learn to stand each other which amounts to forbearance. Speaking of community gardening in Pakistan, it has to be confessed that like other faculties of life, we are lagging way behind the developed world. People in the developed world came to finally realize that we need to build a lasting bond among our communities or else the social fabric may lose its brilliance. This prompted the boons of community gardening. Besides, knowing the banes of consuming food grown with the help of fertilizers and poisonous pesticides, community gardening assumed more importance in their viewpoint.

Of course, there are some cones of this type of gardening too. For instance, community gardening causes burnout in the people who think they work more than others. This vitiates the pros of community gardening in the people having feelings of burnout. Sometimes, people polarize the gathering and thus materialization of its productive benefits remain to come up.

Overall, the benefits of community gardening outweigh the disadvantages of it which leads us to its utility practically. After seeing so many benefits, one must appreciate this type of gardening which not only fulfills health issues but also a variety of social benefits to unite the communities.