ULI Building Healthy Places Toolkit

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12 Support on-site gardening and farming

  • Strategies
  • Insights
Photo: Serena Peck

Evidence Based Strategies

  • Provide space for growing food on site through community gardens, edible landscaping, or a smallscale farm.
  • Facilitate opportunities to get locally grown produce to residents, for example through farm stands, farmers markets, or community-supported agriculture arrangements.

Best Practice Strategies

  • Partner with local community organizations that offer gardening or farming expertise. Collaborate with them on site assessment, planning, and preparation.
  • Select sites that are suitable for growing food and readily accessible to potential gardeners.
  • Assess past uses and potential pollution sources. Test soils and take steps to manage risks as appropriate, for example, by using raised beds or container gardens.
  • Consult available local guidelines for community garden design.
  • Craft a management and maintenance plan with clearly laid-out responsibilities for day-to-day gardening activities, as well as rules, security, and strategies for preventing vandalism. If needed, hire a specialty landscaper or gardener.

Marja Preston

Former president, Asani Development
Bainbridge Island, Washington
 
  • I have always believed that our social well-being has an immense effect on our overall health. The way we design buildings and neighborhoods can profoundly influence our social health, having wide-reaching impacts for individuals and communities as a whole.
  • The places we design and build now will be here for the next 100 years. As developers, we must create places that are healthy for people and for the planet so that we shape our future responsibly.

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Building Healthy Places

The ULI Building Healthy Places Initiative is leveraging the power of ULI’s global networks to shape projects and places in ways that improve the health of people and communities.

Acknowledgements

The Center for Active Design served as contributing author and expert content advisor for this project.
The project was supported by the Colorado Health Foundation, the estate of Melvin Simon, and the ULI Foundation.

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