Compositions, practices and constraints of home garden: the case of Bahir Dar city, Ethiopia

Bahir Dar city has suitable agro-ecologies for production of different types of fruits and vegetables, but unfortunately the area allotted for these crops, and their production and productivity are very low. There is a dearth of research and documentation on household gardens in the town. The present study attempted to assess the home garden species diversity, composition, challenges and to keep the documentation about home gardening as special references for horticultural crops in Bahir Dar city. The research was carried out in seven selected sub-cities of Bahir Dar between September and June 2020. Semi-structured questioners and interviews, as well as home garden visits, were used to collect data. 302 families were chosen based on the availability of kitchen gardening space and where kitchen gardening is already done. According to the findings of this study, home gardens in Bahir Dar city had a high species diversity and a diverse composition (especially horticultural crops) such as mango, avocado, papaya, head cabbage, tomato, and lettuce. Furthermore, as a source of additional food, home gardens significantly benefit both the gardener and society as well as income, and environmental improvement of the community. However, insufficient agricultural support encourages the use of pesticides, and small garden sizes reduce diversity of species and production. If interested organizations and scholars give these issues some thought, the hotspot will continue to sustainably support home gardening and its current biodiversity in the future. Home gardens are repositories of biocultural assets of communities, the hub of plant based resources and the microcosms of agro biodiversity hotspots. But, as population pressure increases over time in the area, expansion of agricultural land (by deforestation), degradation of land and the demand for food will also increase. Thus, in the long run, people in the cities may be limited to their home garden for food supply with little other supplements. Therefore, assessing and documenting current home garden systems in the city along with local people ethnobotanical knowledge of the local people about them with a special reference to horticultural crops is very important.