Building social capital during a community gardening project designed to save native Australian pollinators

Pollinators, such as bees, birds, and butterflies, play a vital role in biodiversity and food production (Baldock, 2020). Unfortunately, due to habitat loss (Aizen et al., 2009; Millard et al., 2021), pollinator numbers are declining worldwide (Cheptou, 2021). To save pollinators, grassroot solutions are emerging as dedicated community gardens.

In Australia, the community garden movement focuses on interactions between people and nature (Foodwise, 2022). Community gardens are enablers for people to interact and connect with nature, creating a space of well-being and belongingness (Clarke et al., 2023; Frumkin et al., 2017; Guitart et al., 2012; Kingsley et al., 2020; Small et al., 2023). Despite previous research (Alaimo et al., 2010; Egerer et al., 2020; Firth et al., 2011; Raneng et al., 2023), there remain gaps in community garden literature related to the social experiences of volunteers during the garden development stages.

In particular, social capital has received limited attention regarding its impact on community gardeners (Kingsley et al., 2020). Social capital is a ‘social collective asset’ that requires an individual to participate in social relationship building (Glover, 2004). This investment benefits the individual by giving them access to the resources of others within the social group. Community gardens often depend on social capital to function well; for example, individual gardeners reap the value of shared physical labour as they work together to prepare the soil in communal garden beds.

While there are several social capital frameworks, we applied Coleman’s (1988) model containing six forms of social relationships: Obligations and expectations; Information; Norms and sanctions; Authority; Social structures; and Intentional organisation. To better understand the social capital experiences of volunteers involved in a community garden project, our research question asks:

How do stakeholder groups co-create meaning around our Pollinator and Community Garden?

We used a collaborative ethnography methodology to collect data and collate volunteers’ and researchers’ experiences of a phenomenon (May & Pattillo-McCoy, 2000), which consists of co-creating a pollinator and community garden. Additionally, we adopted an Assemblage approach (Nail, 2017; Feely, 2020), amalgamating and analysing written, visual and auditory artefacts of participants’ experiences (Denshire & Lee, 2013).

The key findings for the applied framework included the role of Norms and sanctions, and the Obligation and expectation of participants to have minimal rules where only basic Information was required. The Social structures were horizontal, enabling knowledge-sharing and equality in participation with ‘everyone having a role’. Volunteers reported experiencing Intentional organisation of freedom and flexibility. Importantly, Authority was not valued, although participants appreciated the collaborative leadership and supported guidance regarding “…freedom to pick and choose…– a nice little creative license.”

In conclusion, the six elements of the social capital framework emerged from the experience of volunteers building the garden. Volunteers saw value in shared expertise without losing their sense of purpose and reasons for participating in the pollinator garden project. The collective asset of social capital enhanced community engagement and led to intentions for future actions.