Barriers and Facilitators to Engagement in Collective Gardening Among Black African Immigrants in Alberta, Canada
Abstract
1. Introduction
Theoretical Framework—Socio-Ecological Model
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Research Design
2.2. Participant Recruitment
2.3. Ethics and Participant Protection
3. Results
3.1. Socio-Demographic Characteristics of Survey Participants
3.2. Facilitators of Engagement in Collective Community Gardening
I have been involved in collective community gardening. I love gardening a lot, unfortunately, I didn’t know about it earlier. It is one of the best things one can ever do. Any community or any culture that treasures farming, they can thrive in these spaces. They don’t need to depend on external help for survival. But if people become lazy, and they think that everything should come from their government and sit down and wait for the government to do something, then it’s a recipe for disaster, for the people, or for the community. So yes, I have been involved, and I would love to continue.(IDI-06)
I can say it’s important to me, partly because these are the foods that I have grown up with, and also because I understand the nutritional value of some of these foods, especially the vegetables.(IDI-02)
Collective community gardening comes with a lot of benefits. To start with, you meet new people, people from different backgrounds and you form a community. We have different communities that we belong to. But you become part of a community, another community that is different from the ones that you’re familiar with.(IDI-05)
Because I once saw, my friend bring tomatoes from a collective community garden, not the one from the shop. From a real garden. It made me feel like, “Wow, is this being done here?” I was wondering how people were able to plant these things. So that got me curious that if there is a way, then maybe I will try it and learn from it.(IDI-04)
In the collective community garden, because we have people from different countries, they come, and they’re like, “What are you growing there?” Vegetables that they’ve not seen, or they are like, “How do you prepare this?” Like when they see me grow a lot of kale, then they’re like, “What are you going to do with all that?”, then with that, we now start talking about, you know, how I use it, how I’ll prepare and store it. And yeah, so the collective community garden, it’s helped me learn quite a lot, meet people, and see how they are planting, you know, different ways of doing that because I learn something new.(IDI-02)
3.3. Barriers to Engagement in Collective Community Gardening
3.3.1. Personal or Individual Level
For those of us that are immigrants, one major barrier will be the time factor…. You see, many families, especially in the Black community, are working, trying to survive, and many of us have young ones, because we are immigrants from not more than 20 years. Let’s say from 15 years up, so many of us have new families, young children, so time would be a factor, the time we go to work, the time we go for their businesses. It could be a factor for our people to come out.(IDI-03)
You know, people are thinking about how to pay their rent, how to pay their bills. So that can be one barrier, why people are not able to go and volunteer to do collective community gardening, because they are thinking about their bills, you know? Like for me, I work twelve hours. You work twelve hours. When you come home, you have to do a lot of work again, cook, take care of the kids, so sometimes it’s challenging. It’s a big challenge.(IDI-01)
I haven’t heard of community gardening actually, to be honest. I haven’t and that was probably why I as a person has not participated. But I mean, I would love to. I would love to see how that would work. I’m open to trying new things, and something I think it’s available. Of course, but why I haven’t done it is because I have never had an opportunity. In fact, I’m just hearing about it for the first time.(P-01 SC-2)
Like I said, I had no idea that a collective community garden exists in Edmonton, but if I had known that there was a community garden, I would have wanted to be part of it. But what would have hindered me from joining such initiatives would probably be my current engagement, which is my studies. I think my studies would be the one of the major factors I would think that would hinder me from being a part of the community. But as someone who is a garden person, I would definitely make out time.(IDI-07)
3.3.2. Interpersonal and Social Dynamics
My friend and I are the only Black people in that group. I don’t mind saying this, sometimes we’ve faced racial discrimination. Not from everybody. No. But a few people, some people. There are people who love us for who we are, no matter our color. Such things happen. We face discrimination in the area of work. Sometimes you will see it, not all the leaders. But some of them, when we come, they will want us to do the bigger work, the work that requires more energy, but during harvesting we will be left out. Or others, are allowed to harvest whatever they want, but whenever it comes to people of color like us, we are treated differently. But we still continue to go, to attend. That is where we now wish, oh, [pause] how we wish we have our own community garden.(IDI-03)
3.3.3. Community-Level and Organizational Factors
I know some people who are not able to come to the collective community gardens because they are far from where they live. Like where we farm, for instance, I think it’s maybe more than 20 km away from where we live, so it depends on, do people have time to go to the community garden, and how close is it?(IDI-02)
You know, people can even have spaces that are closer to where they live. People can decide that, “Oh, I would belong to the one that is closer to my house,” So it would be more convenient. Besides creating awareness, convenience is also another thing. My husband, for instance, has never come to the collective community garden. Because we live in the Southwest, and the collective community garden is on the Northside. My husband does not like going far. And even when we offer to take him, he’s like, “No, I’m not going.” So some people would not want to maybe drive ten minutes, 15 min, you know, between ten and 20 min to get to the collective community garden. So convenience is a barrier for some people.(IDI-05)
There is a time I had wanted to join a certain collective community garden. But then I was like, “When it comes to the collective, how do people make decisions on the type of vegetables or fruits to grow?” “How do you decide, or how do you agree that we are going to grow this type of vegetable and not this other one?”. So collective community gardens, it really depends on who is involved, because we have different tastes, different desires. In a collective garden, how do people make decisions on what to grow?(IDI-02)
I am involved with a collective community garden, here in Edmonton, but you find that all we do is to garden Canadian food, or even other foreign foods, and not African, but European foods. Because I remember we planted lots of garlic. They bring different species of garlic from Germany, Bulgaria, although they will say, “This one is German, this Bulgarian’s flavour,” all those species of garlic. And others, maybe like tomatoes, different types of tomatoes, they have the Italian, they have the Mexican, and things like that, but nothing from Africa.(IDI-03)
3.3.4. Environmental Constraints
Yeah, so I grow my own vegetables, I only buy vegetables when I’ve not been able to grow enough. Like last year I wasn’t around. I was visiting home, so we did not grow a lot of vegetables here which means that now we are buying. So I can’t wait for May to grow my vegetables. The growing season is short, from May to mid-September. Yes, if your plants go to October, you are taking a risk, because frost can come anytime, especially at night. So normally sukuma wiki [kale] can survive into maybe mid-October, but the other vegetables, once they are hit with the first frost, they just die. So again, when you are planting vegetables, you have to know what you must harvest by September and know what you can risk leaving in the garden.(IDI-02)
As immigrants, we are not able to afford a greenhouse unless we have to rent a place in the greenhouse, which is expensive. We have access to shared community spaces. But, you know, depending on the season, if there is rain, then you will get a good harvest there. If there’s no rain, you will not get any harvest, and if the rain is too much, it destroys away your harvest [Laugh]—like last year we planted our things in one of the collective community garden, and you know, there was a heavy storm, hailstorms that destroyed everything that we planted there. It was a big loss. [Laughs] Yeah, so that brings another distress for the collective community garden. So the greenhouse, it’s necessary, so that if there is a big storm, or whatever, hailstorm, it won’t be affected.(P01 SC 1)
3.3.5. Structural Barriers
4. Discussion
5. Limitations
6. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Survey Participant Demographics, n = 119 | |
---|---|
Gender, n (%) | |
Female | 65 (54.6) |
Male | 54 (45.4) |
Year Born, median (range) | 1986 (1948–2006) |
Year Arrived in Canada, median (range) | 2014 (1978–2024) |
Employed, n (%) | |
Yes | 66 (59.4) |
No | 45 (40.6) |
If yes, do you have more than one job? n (%) | |
Yes | 13 (19.7) |
No | 53 (80.3) |
Highest Level of Education, n (%) | |
No formal education | 1 (0.8) |
Elementary/primary complete | 3 (2.5) |
High school | 29 (24.4) |
Post-secondary | 86 (72.2) |
Marital status, n (%) | |
Never married (single) | 50 (44.2) |
Married | 56 (49.5) |
Common law | 2 (1.7) |
Separated/widowed | 5 (4.4) |
Household size, n (%) | |
Single person | 11 (9.2) |
2–5 people | 43 (36.1) |
More than 5 | 65 (54.6) |
Household Structure, n (%) | |
Female-centered | 28 (23.5) |
Male-centered | 21 (17.6) |
Nuclear | 54 (45.4) |
Extended | 16 (13.4) |
Common types of gardening, (%) * | |
Home/backyard gardening | 49 (41.2) |
Collective community gardens | 44 (37.0) |
Community gardens | 33 (27.7) |
No identified | 22 (18.5) |
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Share and Cite
Otoadese, D.; Kamara, I.; Onyango, E. Barriers and Facilitators to Engagement in Collective Gardening Among Black African Immigrants in Alberta, Canada. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2025, 22, 789. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22050789
Otoadese D, Kamara I, Onyango E. Barriers and Facilitators to Engagement in Collective Gardening Among Black African Immigrants in Alberta, Canada. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2025; 22(5):789. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22050789
Chicago/Turabian StyleOtoadese, Destiny, Issa Kamara, and Elizabeth Onyango. 2025. "Barriers and Facilitators to Engagement in Collective Gardening Among Black African Immigrants in Alberta, Canada" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 22, no. 5: 789. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22050789
APA StyleOtoadese, D., Kamara, I., & Onyango, E. (2025). Barriers and Facilitators to Engagement in Collective Gardening Among Black African Immigrants in Alberta, Canada. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 22(5), 789. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22050789