Community Gardens and Food Security Go Hand-in-Hand

Picture this: a school gymnasium, alive with basketball games, pep rallies, and… an abundance of fresh food coming from the roof? It’s a future many want to see become reality—our community spaces reimagined and transformed to serve us better, like a sprawling garden on top of a school gym.

No matter where you live, growing fresh food is possible. Yes, even in urban areas, where people garden on balconies, in rec centers, and, of course, rooftops.

Urban gardens have many benefits. One is helping areas that suffer from heat island effects like increased energy consumption to counter higher temperatures, negative health impacts, and air pollutants. According to the EPA, green roofs can make surface temperatures 56°F lower than conventional roofs and reduce nearby air temperatures by 20°F, thereby opposing the buildings, roads, and concrete absorbing heat to create heat islands. Another is that they teach gardening fundamentals—and everything that goes along with gardening, like nutrition and climate—to anyone and everyone, especially at public buildings. Plus, they’re great for people living in apartments, condos, or other housing without much outdoor space.

In some places, in fact, the benefits of green infrastructure like green roofs are even making their way into legislation, like the Excess Urban Heat Mitigation Act of 2025, a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and House directing the government to “establish an urban heat mitigation and management grant program” for eligible projects like green roofs. In San Francisco, the ordinance "Better Roofs: Living Roof Alternative" mandates certain new buildings’ rooftops install energy-saving systems like solar panels and living roofs.

Additionally, both cities and states like New York City and Oregon offer grants and incentives for green rooftops (any rooftop covered with vegetation, including gardens, grasses, and flowers), while in 2009 Toronto became the first city in North America to require green roofs for certain new buildings.

And crucially, growing fresh food in a community can be an empowering way to decrease food insecurity while providing more opportunities to strengthen ties among neighbors.

In 2023, more than one in 10 U.S. households experienced food insecurity. On average, 47 million Americans face hunger, including one in five children. For one of the wealthiest countries boasting over 300 million acres of cropland, this is unacceptable—and something green roofs, urban gardens, and other green infrastructure can help fix.

Aren’t There Grocery Stores Everywhere?

For those who have never had difficulty accessing a wide variety of food, it can be easy to assume that no matter where someone lives, there must be a grocery store nearby, including access to fresh produce and other healthy options.

Yet in the United States, more than 23 million people, most of them low-income, live in communities that are under-resourced and regularly denied easy access to nutritious, affordable food. Just as safe water is crucial in any environment, so too is the availability of food wherever someone calls home.

“Food security requires addressing not just immediate hunger but also the systemic issues that cause it,” says Erin Meyer, Founder & President of Basil’s Harvest, a nonprofit that engages the power of local, regenerative food systems to promote human and planetary wellbeing, and member of the Soil & Climate Alliance, a program within Green America’s Center for Sustainability Solutions.

Commonly referred to as “urban food deserts,” the USDA defines these areas as places with “no ready access to a store with fresh and nutritious food options within one mile” and a rural food desert as somewhere “10 miles or more from the nearest market.”

However, the term “food desert,” first officially used by the Low Income Project Team of the UK’s Nutrition Task Force in 1995, is not entirely accurate. Many activists and community organizers instead prefer the term “food apartheid,” to make clear that the lack of access to healthy, nourishing food is not a naturally occurring phenomenon, but rather a consequence of racist and discriminatory systems.

“Food insecurity disproportionately affects certain populations,” Meyer says. "Communities of color experience disproportionate levels of food insecurity due to the continued impact of systemic racism and discrimination."

This is to say nothing of nutrition. In low-income areas, stores like Dollar General and local bodegas offer the easiest access to groceries, but they stock cheaper items, which tend to be processed foods with very little nutritional value.

Meyer describes food access and nutrition as “deeply connected.” Food insecurity at all is linked to higher healthcare costs, while nutritional access and quality is crucial for physical and mental health, with studies showing nutritious foods playing a role in alleviating symptoms of depression and mental health struggles.

Communities Can—and Should—Have Multiple Pathways to Food

Food access depends on a complex system affected by many things. Climate change impacts the very soil of our planet, while global conflict can disrupt supply chains and trade agreements, destroy farmland, and displace farmers. These issues, happening both abroad and at home, impact the affordability and accessibility of nutritious foods throughout the U.S.

Fortunately, there are many ways to get involved with food access in your community. Meyer details six ways anyone can start acting (fig. 1), including volunteering at a food pantry or advocating for legislation that promotes nutrition and food access.

“Legislation creates the framework that determines food access for millions of Americans through strategic funding mechanisms and policy implementation,” says Meyer. Until recently, legislation supported programs like the Farm Bill and SNAP, which provided food assistance to low-income people. With the passing of the Trump Administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” however, $186 billion in funding will be cut from SNAP by 2034 and critics warn it could worsen food insecurity across the country.

You can also take a hands-on approach to feeding your friends, family, and community, and solutions to food access aren’t limited to rooftops.

Climate Victory Gardens are personal and communal gardens prioritizing regenerative practices, like restoring soil health to draw down carbon, that can radically improve a community’s intake and access to fresh foods. Green America’s Climate Victory Gardens program has over 30,000 gardens registered nationwide, including private gardens and public ones, like school and community gardens, and each new garden is a new source of food and planet health.

“Climate Victory Gardens strengthen communities both literally and figuratively,” says Emma Kriss, Food Campaigns Manager at Green America.

Kriss notes how the gardens can help protect human and environmental health when tended without the use of pesticides and fertilizers. Gardening provides the opportunity for light exercise, forging connections among neighbors, and can bolster mental health. The gardens themselves help reduce flooding by creating healthier soil that can absorb more water and offer safe havens for pollinators.

“One of my favorite stories comes from one of our gardeners who is also a beekeeper,” says Kriss. “When his neighbor observed that his own crops were doing better once the bee colony was established, the [gardener] was able to convince [the neighbor] to change his pesticide use to help protect the bees!”

Building a brighter future requires creativity, innovation, and partnership. Although food insecurity is a global and profound affair, we can still make a lot of progress at local levels. Our efforts can help ensure that our neighbors have food on their table, kids have access to healthy school meals, and every community can easily obtain nutritious and affordable groceries.

Think about the different ways you can help feed your neighbors, or advocate for those most at risk of food insecurity, and then go tell the local high school’s principle and city council that it’s time for an abundant garden space, wafting with the smells of fresh soil and ripening berries in the sun, to grace the school gymnasium’s roof.