The Montreal Community Gardens: An Ambiguous Social Space

The City of Montreal Community Gardens program provides Montrealers with the opportunity to cultivate a small vegetable plot. The program is also designed to offer a space for leisure & socializing. However, being at once public, institutional, social, & individual, the community garden may be seen as a socially ambiguous space. This paper tries to reach an understanding of the social dimensions attached to community gardens by analyzing the social interaction & relationships between the gardener-users. The social image of the community garden that resulted from this analysis suggests that it is a space of limited socializing, where relationships develop in hugger-mugger fashion, are mainly concerned with gardening practices, & are limited to individuals or small groups. The only community element of these gardens is their name. 7 Tables, 37 References. Adapted from the source document.