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Australian Social Work

ISSN: 0312-407X (Print) 1447-0748 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rasw20

Eco-social Work in Action: A Place for Community Gardens

Susan Bailey, Antonia Hendrick & Marilyn Palmer

To cite this article: Susan Bailey, Antonia Hendrick & Marilyn Palmer (2018) Eco-social Work in Action: A Place for Community Gardens, Australian Social Work, 71:1, 98-110, DOI: 10.1080/0312407X.2017.1384032

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Eco-social Work in Action: A Place for Community Gardens Susan Baileya,b, Antonia Hendrickc, and Marilyn Palmerd

aKind Spaces Consultancy, Perth, Australia; bInstitute of Agriculture, University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia; cSchool of Occupational Therapy and Social Work, Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University, Bentley, Western Australia, Australia; dSocial Work Program, Faculty of Regional Professional Studies, Edith Cowan University—South West Bunbury Campus, Bunbury, Western Australia, Australia

ABSTRACT In this paper, the authors theorise on eco-social work, an emerging descriptor for practices located at the intersection of social work and eco-justice. It presents a collaborative auto-ethnographic study undertaken by three social work academics that addressed the question: In what ways can community gardens be sites for eco- social work practice? The question was premised on the idea that community gardens are often recognised as sites for practising sustainability. An action learning research framework guided a process in and with three different community gardens. Specifically, this paper highlights practices that suggest community gardens are spaces for social work practice including: resistance to the dominant discourses of hyper-capitalism and consumerism; the building of trust and cooperation in relationships; and the development of egalitarian relationships between people and, ultimately, all elements of the natural realm. The findings suggest that community gardens can be spaces for practising eco-social work.

IMPLICATIONS . Community gardens are spaces where eco-social workers can

develop their understanding of eco-justice and challenge unsustainability.

. Socialworkers,workingacross a rangeofpractice fields canengage professionally with community gardens.

. Community gardens provide a context where egalitarian, cooperative, and trusting social work practice can take place.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 3 October 2016 Accepted 17 August 2017

KEYWORDS Eco-social Work; Community Gardens; Eco-justice; Community Work; Environment; Sustainability

We begin by acknowledging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on whose country we meet to write, work in our community gardens, teach, and learn. We acknowledge that prior to invasion the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples lived within complex kinship and family systems, nourished by the land as well as nourishing of the land. These first peoples, with some of the oldest knowledge systems, offer ways for thinking about the biosphere and practising eco-social work. We further acknowledge the gifts and strengths of Indigenous peoples across the globe whose practices help inform better ways to care for our planet.

The idea that the biosphere is the key determinant of human wellbeing, has appeared in social work writing over the past decades (Furness, Gilligan, Gray, & Coates, 2013;

© 2017 Australian Association of Social Workers

CONTACT Susan Bailey [email protected] Kind Spaces Consultancy; Institute of Agriculture, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL WORK, 2018 VOL. 71, NO. 1, 98–110 https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407X.2017.1384032

Germain, 1973; Hoff & Polack, 1993; McKinnon & Alston, 2016; Närhi, 2004; Soine, 1987) and incorporates theorising from shallow ecology, social ecology, and deep ecology (Besthorn, 2012; Närhi & Matthies, 2016). As Zapf (2009), Norton (2012), and recently Bowles, Boetto, Jones, and McKinnon (2016) have noted, social workers have good cause to include the natural realm (not just the economic and social) in their construction of the person-in-environment. Human beings undermining the quality of the earth’s air, water, soil, and biodiversity, will inevitably lead to ecological overshoot and collapse (Diamond, 2005). Harmful air pollution, atmospheric and ocean warming, extreme weather events, desertification, ocean acidification, and species extinction already seriously threaten human wellbeing (Atkisson, 2011). Disadvantaged groups are impacted more heavily by these threats than the wealthy who can move, mitigate, and insure against the ensuing social, political, and economic chaos and loss. Ecological harm is a recognisa- ble social justice and human rights issue (Ife, 2013; International Panel on Climate Change, 2013), and therefore a significant issue for social workers.

This paper describes the first iteration of an action learning process undertaken by three social workers engaged in a long-term collaborative auto-ethnography to explore the meaning and practice of eco-social work. We had been friends and colleagues working across three different universities for several years before we realised that, independently, we had each become involved with community gardens. This led us to wonder if commu- nity gardens could be sites for eco-social work practice, and if so, in what ways. Our research process began with the realisation that our personal histories and stories, reflec- tions, student reports, and assessments about community gardens were influencing pro- foundly our professional learning, development, and practice. The formalisation of our reflections and our intent to study, record, and collate our stories, and to include individ- uals and groups connected to our gardens, led us to obtain formal ethics approvals. The first phase of the action learning process is to begin with the experience of participants. As collaborative auto-ethnographers, we begin with ourselves and our stories (Table 1).

Eco-social Work

Recognising the vulnerability of our biosphere and the importance of making changes to avoid unsustainability are at the heart of our practice as eco-social workers, a term we use to describe social workers who make “the connections between social and ecological dimensions more visible and even political” (Närhi, 2004, p. 14). Eco-social work theoris- ing and practice has developed across the world (Heinsch, 2012; Kemp, 2011; Nöjd, 2016) and includes contributions across all the practice domains outlined in the Australian Association of Social Workers (2013) Practice standards. These include: work with indi- viduals and partnerships; families (Boetto, 2016); groups; communities (Case, 2016); social policy practice (Peeters, 2012); management, leadership, and administration (Alston, Hazelberger, & Hargreaves, 2016); education and training (Nesmith & Smyth, 2015); and, research and evaluation (Raymaekers, 2016). As well as these authors and those listed in the bibliography of the Global alliance for a deep-ecological social work (Besthorn, 2011), there are many other social workers identifying and practicing as eco- social workers. For example, there are more than 300 members in the Ecologically Conscious Social Work Facebook Page (Powers, 2017), which suggests a growing move- ment of social workers concerned about unsustainability.

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Table 1 Our stories Antonia’s story Susan’s story Marilyn’s story

I had the privilege of growing up in a small rural community and have always (although at times not knowing it) held community (and all its enviro-social expressions) as important to my overall sense of self and wellbeing. Families coming together over barbecues and sporting events, the street burn-offs, and running free with local children through the bush and the creek were activities that nurtured a sense of belonging and instilled within me the importance of relationships; not only to other human beings but to the environment. On the traditional land of the Whadjuk Noongar people rests the Glen Forrest Community Garden, a place where community connections work. Since 2008, activities have brought together community members around valuing the natural realm, growing food, revegetating areas alongside other activities. All this, activated from realising and harnessing the skills, strengths, and knowledges of people in a place. Relationships are formed, strengthened and sustained. Within this garden space the valuable and varied learning and teaching is evident and highly relevant to both the importance and the power of and in community.

It is in the common unity, when members collectively plan, organise, reflect, and act, that ideas and practices of an eco- social work is realised.

There was a time not so long ago when I didn’t like human beings. I despaired of their self-interest and greed that I believed would lead to the destruction of our Earth. I soon realised it was likely Earth would survive but humans would not. With this realisation, my questions about saving the Earth became questions about whether I believed humans were worth saving.

Over time, I observed humans to discover if there was anything worth saving. It was while watching humans respond to my grandson when we walked the streets on Saturdays, that I came to like them again. I liked their curiosity, joy, kindness, gentleness, and generosity when they responded to my grandson. It was then I remembered humans’ capacity for love.

If we are to save humans we have to protect the Earth. This requires us to live differently and create places where curiosity, joy, kindness, and generosity can thrive in the spaces between all life.

Establishing the Duncraig Edible Garden was my first deliberate eco-social work action as well as an important act of faith in humans, who are, after all, worth saving.

In 2010 I discovered education for sustainability and wondered why it wasn’t a part of social work education. When the AASW validated ecological care in the Code of ethics (AASW, 2010), I began to identify as an environmental educator. Soon after, a colleague invited me to partner in a funded project to research transition to sustainability on our campus. We held focus groups, an expo, public lectures, and built a campus community garden. But it all became too hard. Management was disinterested and I lost heart. When there was management renewal, I regained my confidence and began incorporating the garden into teaching social work. In the garden, students are encouraged to assume a high level of autonomy and practise collaborative leadership with the goal of building the campus community. Over time we have worked on upcycling furniture, a Facebook page, community arts projects, and explored opportunities for social inclusion. Time is spent reflecting on individual and team goals, our (often fraught) experiences, practices, and strengths using a sustainability discourse and informed by community and group work theories.

A few months into 2014, on a writing retreat, Antonia, Susan, and I realised we were all working in and with community gardens. This set us on a path, to explore the ways community gardens can be sites for eco-social work practice.

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Eco-justice

We use eco-justice as a construct that “holds together concerns for the natural world and for human life, that recognizes that devastation of the environment and economic injustice go hand in hand, and that affirms that environmental and human rights are indivisible” (Pedersen, 1998, p. 254). Eco-justice captures the idea of a just relationship between humans and the natural realm and recognises the imperative of simultaneous ecological and economic justice, an idea captured in the 2000 Earth Charter (The Earth Charter Initiative, 2001).

Avoiding Unsustainability

One way of thinking about unsustainability is outlined by the limits to growth thesis (Meadows, Randers, & Meadows, 2005), which argues that the biosphere can be sustained only when humans take matter (such as natural resources) out at a rate which allows for natural replacement, and only when they put matter (such as pollution) in at a rate which allows for natural absorption (Atkisson, 2011). The human species expands at an expo- nential rate due to the absence of significant predators; at present, within hyper-capitalist economic systems, people take matter out and put matter back at rates of growth that are damaging the biosphere and putting all life at risk. This is clearly unsustainable and dis- turbingly short-sighted (Trainer, 1989).

Community Gardens

The Australian City Farm and Community Garden Network (ACFCGN) (2016) describes community gardens as “places where people come together to grow fresh food, to learn, relax and make new friends”. Nettle (2014, p. 35) refers to the work of the American Com- munity Gardening Association to define a community garden as a place that “can grow flowers, vegetables or community. It can be one community plot, or can be many individ- ual plots. It can be at a school, hospital, or in a neighborhood”.

Community gardens vary in purpose, size, location, design, and governance styles. According to Nettle (2014), their various purposes generally translate to outcomes in one or more of the following areas: reclaiming public spaces (Thornton, 2017); community building (Thompson, Corkery, & Judd, 2007); environmental education (Clavin, 2011); community enterprise (Bendt, Barthel, & Colding, 2013); food security (Evers & Hodgson, 2011); social and cultural expression (Chan, Pennisi, & Francis, 2016); restoration andmaintenance of physical andmental health (Marsh& Spinaze, 2016); elements of social and environmental sustainability (Okvat & Zautra, 2011) and; social inclusion and enhanced cultural and linguistic diversity (Agustina & Beilin, 2012). As spaces where people can act local, think global, community gardens are also sites for local collective activi- ties linked to far-reaching global policies and practices (Ghose & Pettygrove, 2014).

Digging into our Gardens

Community gardens are the physical expressions of the soil and location in which they grow, the humans that shape and share the space, as well as the social, cultural, political,

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and economic contexts that influence the space (Bronfenbrenner, 1977; Guitart, Byrne, & Pickering, 2015; Thornton, 2017).Oneway of thinking about the underpinning philosophes of different gardens is to use Howe’s taxonomy of social work theory (1987, p. 50). Some gardens are informed by ideas connected to the sociology of radical change and seek to resist and challenge unsustainability, whereas others, informed by the sociology of regu- lation, are where people will garden together, building connections and community but without an explicit social change agenda. What can be said with certainty is that no two community gardens are alike. Our gardens are summarised in Table 2 above.

Methodology

A collaborative auto-ethnographic approach is one whereby “instead of studying others outside their research team, collaborative auto-ethnographers turn their interrogative tools on themselves, generating and utilizing their autobiographical data to understand social phenomena” (Chang, Ngunjiri, & Hernandez, 2012, p. 37). The aim of our auto- ethnographic work has been to build an understanding of the theory and practice of eco-social work from our various areas of research and practice. Our method was to bring together individual stories about our work in the gardens into a collective story at a series of meetings (usually in community gardens) and writing retreats where we ana- lysed and explored what we were doing and what was happening in our respective garden spaces through the lens of social work theories and practices. Our first focus was to address the research question: In what ways can community gardens be sites for eco-social work practice? To help us manage the process, we used an Action Learning Spiral cycle, which places reflection at the centre of a series of phases: (1) start with the experiences of the participants; (2) look for patterns; (3) add new theory and information; (4) practise skills, strategise, and plan for action; and, (5) apply in action (Change Agency, 2014). Stages (4) and (5) continue and will be reported upon in a forthcoming article. This paper describes the first three phases of the cycle.

Findings and Discussion

Nomatter howwe thought about our practices in the community gardens, as we looked for patterns in line with our method, we found we were drawn to Kelly and Sewell’sWith head, heart and hand: Dimensions of community building (1988), a framework with which we

Table 2 Our gardens Duncraig Edible Garden ECU Bunbury Community Garden Glen Forrest Community Garden

Indigenous Country

Noongar Whadjuk Noongar Wadandi Noongar Whadjuk

Soil Swan Coastal Plain Karrakatta soil Sand

Swan Coastal Plain Bassendean soil Sand

Darling Scarp Deep sand duplexes Sand over clay

Location Suburban coastal Located outside public library

Regional coastal Near university library & students’ common room

Suburban hills Public open space near reserve & playground

Type Permaculture Public access garden

Permaculture inspired Unfenced raised beds

Permaculture inspired Public access garden

Economic Focus on alternative economics

Food is free Focus on alternative economics

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were all familiar. These authors describe the trialectic (logic of “wholeness”) and concep- tualise the heart dimension of belonging through notions of space, place, base (1988, p. 42). The logic of the trialectic provides for alternatives to binary notions, where “possible relationships among factors” are conceivable (Kelly & Sewell, 1988, p. 23). The point of this logic, of which other trios are possible, is that by holding three components in continu- ous relationship to one another, creative energies, synergies, and linkages can be realised.

We saw the trialectic represented in our relationship as three social workers, working intentionally from an eco-justice perspective, within three universities that expected us to act competitively in line with neoliberal principles. However, rather than feel competitive towards one another, we found our relationships nourishing and sustaining, and essential to collaborative work. We would intuitively rotate responsibility for organising meetings, cooking, planning, researching, and writing depending on ever-changing work and family responsibilities. Between us we had one very elderly parent, nine children, and one grand- child. We actively sought to identify shared heart elements of practice emerging from our experiences with the gardens as we struggled with increasingly hostile and incomprehen- sible workplaces marred by the commodification of education, corporatisation, marketisa- tion, and unrealistic performance expectations. Not only did we recognise ourselves in the notion of the trialectic, but we also recognised the extent to which our stories were about connection and belonging to the physical space/place/base of the individual gardens. Community gardens engender a sense of belonging and connection (Holland, 2004; Wise, 2014). However, at the same time, they can be highly politicised and contested spaces (Aptekar, 2015; Eizenberg, 2012).

In this section we explain how we developed the three value-based practices that emerged from our stories: resistance (to unsustainability), cooperation and trust, and ega- litarianism. These were identified after a particularly long session at a writing retreat, col- lating stories of our experiences of the gardens over the previous 12 months, drawing key elements with a whiteboard marker on a window (in the absence of a whiteboard) and actively looking for the patterns. We asked ourselves these questions: What did our many and varied stories represent? What did our experiences have in common?We recog- nised that our stories were about our activities in relation to food production, community building, and the teaching and learning of social work through student placements and for transformational learning opportunities about groups and communities.

Community Gardens as Sites of Resistance

Each of us had been active participants (and often leaders) in establishing the three gardens over several years and all of them were unfenced, public-access gardens. We realised that resistance to hyper-capitalism, consumerism, and the commodification of food had been a key element in the development of all of them. Davison (2006, p. 210) has posed the question: “To what extent can sustainability be approached as a strategy of social change from within centres of institutionalised power and to what extent does it demand an oppositional politics of resistance and subversion?” Our view that commu- nity gardens could be sites for resistance to prevailing ideologies had been reinforced in 2014 when the Federal government abolished the $1.5 million Community Food Grants program, citing community gardens and farmers’ markets as a biosecurity threat. The peak body for fruit and vegetable growers suggested the money would be better spent

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developing export markets for commercial growers (Honan, 2014). Thus community gardens would seem to pose a threat (more symbolic than real) to the hegemonic version of Western capitalism, tied to globalisation and corporatisation (Carroll & Greeno, 2013).

Community gardens are resistive and subversive in so far as they challenge the commo- dification of food by encouraging and facilitating people to grow their own food, to gift and swap excess; these discourses and practices potentially undermine the power of super- markets to manufacture desire and encourage excessive consumption of food and other consumer goods (Food is Free). According to Ife (2013), globalisation robs communities of their individual identity through homogenising, consumption-oriented spaces such as fast food outlets. In contrast, community gardens manifest the valuing of local identity and the production of culture through unique projects of community art, recycling, market days, and other culture-producing activities.

Community Gardens as Sites for Building Cooperation and Trust

Through sharing our experiences, we recognised that the quality of our connectedness and belonging was embedded in the extent to which we could recognise and, if possible, support the building of cooperation and trust within the garden spaces, as a metaphor for humans in relationship with the natural realm.

Social work student placements with community gardens challenge a taken-for-granted view that what counts as social work only takes place in formalised, bureaucratic organ- isational structures and fields of practice such as health, corrections, or child protection. Our experience has been that community garden placements provide powerful learning opportunities for students who are open to the inevitable uncertainties of what the learn- ing will entail. The original offer of a placement by the Glen Forrest Community Garden was rejected by one of our universities, but taken up by another, and the student worked alongside community members and the local council to develop the garden project and to work with an adjacent community that had been impacted by a severe bushfire. To estab- lish a successful, innovative placement with progressive community work outcomes the students, host agencies (specifically local government staff), garden community members, university placement staff, and field educators worked cooperatively and trusted in the process as well as one another. Eclectic ways of knowing, being, and doing have been realised since then, through other students undertaking community garden placements and actively developing discourses of cooperation and trust, rather than discourses of distrust and wariness about these unconventional placements.

Community Gardens as Spaces for Practising Egalitarianism

Gordon (cited in Nettle, 2014, p. 180) describes prefigurative politics as engaging in prac- tices “which seek to manifest political aims in the present but without prescriptiveness or utopianism”, effectively to start as we mean to go on. Egalitarianism is one of the charac- teristics of social relations that Gordon envisaged for creating a more just and sustainable future. Egalitarian relationships emerged as another key, common element in the stories we shared about the gardens. This is hardly surprising as we had all been influential in establishing the gardens and had likely drawn people around us who were like-minded.

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However, we also experienced people struggling with the idea, preferring to establish some kind of formal hierarchy within the organisational structures of the gardens. Thus the gardens continue to be spaces for practising how to establish and sustain egalitarian relationships.

In the campus community garden, the idea of egalitarianism is introduced to students in the context of a traditionally hierarchical teaching and learning process. In the academic unit Collective Interventions, taught around community garden projects and activities, transformative learning theory is used to unsettle students’ ideas about authority and power by encouraging students to practice more egalitarian student–student and lec- turer–student relationships. Mezirow (cited in Jones, 2010, p. 73) describes transformative learning as that which “transforms problematic frames of reference—sets of fixed assump- tions and expectations (habits of mind, meaning perspectives, mindsets)—to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, reflective, and emotionally able to change”. Working in the garden, and through their projects, students’ fixed assumptions about who can make knowledge claims and who can direct the class are challenged. Despite the obvious con- straints of the lecturer-as-assessor and the need to achieve formal learning outcomes, opportunities for egalitarian relationships and participative leadership are established. Initially (and often for quite some time) students find this disconcerting and seek a return to the traditional expert teacher–passive student roles. However, through processes of reflection and dialogue, the parallels between traditional hierarchical relationships in the classroom, in the wider society (around class, gender, ethnicity, and abilities), and between human and non-human species are explored. Opportunities for students to trans- form (or at least unsettle) their frames of reference around hierarchy, power, authority, and domination are established and evidenced in assessments as well as formal and infor- mal student feedback. In our conversations about resisting unsustainability and ushering in different rules of relating, we have recognised also our preference for traditional demo- cratic, collegial, and egalitarian governance relationships in our workplaces, while lament- ing their disappearance in the neoliberal university (Ryan, 2012).

The Chairs

In this section, we illustrate this trialectic of key elements in our eco-social work practice in community gardens, by sharing three vignettes about chairs, a motif we recognised amongst our stories. The motif is a heuristic device used to summarise our collective experiences and to signify that any of these stories could have occurred in any of our gardens. We have taken some narrative license; technically the outdoor setting and the blue chair are benches, but “chair” allowed us to convey seats to sit on and a seat of pos- itional power (Table 3).

Implications for Social Work

In responding to our research question we have identified a number of ways, of which many more are possible, in which community gardens can enhance all social work prac- tice. First, community gardens provide spaces where eco-social workers can develop their understanding of eco-justice and challenge unsustainability (Clavin, 2011; Mailhot, 2015). Second, community gardens provide a place where humans can connect to each other and

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Table 3 The chairs Resistance: the outdoor picnic chair and table One of the project teams decided the campus community garden needed furniture, some chairs and a table where people could meet or sit to eat their lunch. Their immediate thought was to apply for some funding. I resisted their implied request for help; if they progressed to a submission, well and good. I encouraged them to spend time in the garden, to think and consider sustainable options.

On many occasions I had noticed that whenever we were physically present in the garden, others were drawn to it with questions and advice. This day, the Guild support officer stopped to chat. I raised the topic of garden furniture and a student asked about Guild funds to buy some. She was supportive of their idea but then offered a picnic setting that was no longer in use. Arrangements were made for it to be relocated to the garden, sanded and painted as part of a garden working bee. The team project became one of negotiation, planning, skills assessment, risk assessment, and much form filling. The picnic setting is well used.

Cooperation and trust: the little blue chair Do we fence the garden to prevent vandalism and protect the garden from the “bad elements” or do we leave it unfenced to invite, encourage, and promote community membership and participation? These questions were raised in the early days of establishing Glen Forrest Community Garden. The final decision was to have a fence-free garden—we wanted to attract people, not keep people out. A run-down, old, rusty, and dilapidated little wood and wrought iron chair, with remnants of blue paint, was gifted to the garden. Some months later it went missing. Sentiments about “rotten youth”, “bad eggs”, and “I told you so” pervaded conversations surrounding its disappearance. Sometime later the little blue chair was returned—totally restored! A community member, under the cloak of anonymity (and with no fences to overcome) gave unconditionally to the community garden. This act of kindness restored not only the little blue chair but a sense of trust, kindness, and collaboration and highlighted the unseen, unrealised gifts and strengths of community.

Egalitarianism: the power of the chair It took two years for the Duncraig Edible Garden to be established. After many meetings and conversations we were granted a small space outside the local library. It was not what we had imagined but it was a beginning and we saw some potential. The library meant people and we wanted to build a community.

We signed a memorandum of understanding with the city council and agreed to become incorporated within two years. Incorporation literally means to form into a body. I realised too late this meant that our carefully egalitarian and collaborative leadership, that acknowledged many bodies and many points of views [many chairs], was to be transformed into a hierarchy with one body [one Chair]. The challenge for us now is to centre and hold our egalitarian base within a hierarchical system. While it is a work in progress, we have had some important opportunities for learning and practising how to continue the collaborative leadership that marked the origins of the group.

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with the natural realm for their wellbeing. Social workers, regardless of how they under- stand sustainability, working across a range of practice fields (including academia, health, mental health, justice, aged care, families, children, and disability), can engage profession- ally with community gardens. Third, the skills of social work are seen and practised in community gardens where the role descriptions of the student, social worker, client, com- munity member, educator, or service user become intentionally blurred, almost invisible, and engagement occurs horizontally among diverse actors as both teachers and learners. Fourth, in our experience, when you are present in a community garden, action happens. In the gardens, people contribute diversely to the rich tapestry of the garden: sharing free food, knowledge of plants and gardening, skills in building and constructing, ideas and problem solving, and the latest news and information. This sharing is a display of the skills, strengths, and gifts alive in community gardens. In this context the idea of the knowledge-holder and knowledge-receiver, and other binary notions are questioned and unsettled. Fifth, community gardens are one of the last manifestations of the commons (Eizenberg, 2012). If the role of social workers is to listen to people’s stories, then community gardens provide a place to be, to learn, and to share. And finally, the col- laborative auto-ethnography methodology has potential for social work practitioners to develop reflective communities of practice. It shares the limitations of much qualitative and constructivist research in that it is a methodology that doesn’t seek to claim a defini- tive truth but rather seeks to begin a dialogue.

Conclusion

This paper describes an exploration into the ways in which community gardens can act as sites for eco-social work practice. Our main finding has been that community gardens can provide social workers with opportunities to apply their values, skills, and knowledge to support sustainability through eco-justice and community building, specifically by sup- porting resistance, facilitating cooperation and trust, and favouring egalitarian relation- ships. As these constructs hold little meaning outside of action, eco-social workers will need to locate their own places from which to practice. Community gardens seem to be one site that fits this bill. We suspect there are many, many others.

Acknowledgements

We extend our heartfelt thanks to our respective community garden communities, whose knowledge and kindness enable us to flourish. Thank you to the Australian Association of Social Workers (WA) branch for their support and to the reviewers whose feedback made this a better paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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