Cultivating wellbeing: healing effects of an urban māra kai (community garden) in community housing in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

Community gardens can have many health and wellbeing benefits, including facilitating improved nutrition and better access to healthy food options, promoting physical activity, and connecting people to nature and their communities. Community gardens can also provide inclusive environments that increase social capital for socially isolated or disempowered groups and may contribute to redressing social and health inequities experienced by these groups. This study examines an Indigenous-led community garden, or māra kai, in an urban social housing environment. Our aim was to understand how establishing such a community garden in this context affects the wellbeing of tenants, the community, and others involved. Guided by an Indigenous model of wellbeing and using go-along interviews to gain an in-depth understanding of participants’ experiences of setting up and working in their māra kai, we found that this community initiative was a vehicle for uplifting the autonomy, confidence and wellbeing of community housing residents through fostering healthy relationships with themselves, their immediate community, and the wider community across the city. We contend that these improvements in wellbeing carry profound significance, capable of providing lasting healing that extends beyond the individual to encompass communities, environments, and past and future generations.