It seems everyone has a green thumb, but where can city-dwelling gardeners find their patch of paradise?
To mark April as Lawn and Garden Month, LawnStarter ranked 2022’s Best Cities for Urban Gardening. We looked for cities with easy access to gardening space and supplies, an ideal climate, and a local gardening community.
What exactly is urban gardening? Think empty parking lot-turned-communal veggie plot, rooftop container garden, or vertical plant wall — and sharing your bounty. This global movement is as much about growing food as it is about cultivating community.
See the 10 best (and 10 worst) cities for urban gardening below, followed by highlights and lowlights from our report.
Highlights and Lowlights
- Setting the Standard in St. Louis: The Gateway to the West is also the gateway to urban agriculture. Our 2022 Urban Gardening Capital not only leads the nation’s 196 biggest cities in access to gardening space, but it also provides ample social space for cross-pollinating ideas with other urban farmers.
Urban Harvest STL sets a prime example. This nonprofit network of urban farms donates most of its harvest to underserved populations and educates the local community.
- Georgia on My Mind: Urban gardening is just peachy in the Peach State, the only state with more than one city in our top 10, including Atlanta, Macon, and Augusta. Each provides top access to private and public gardening spaces and has well-established gardening communities.
Some of those communities help maintain the nation’s largest free-food forest, which Atlanta built in 2021 to address its population’s food insecurity problem.
- Rough Patches in Colorado: The Centennial State has sown a reputation as a sustainability leader, but the emphasis on urban gardening seems to be lacking in its biggest cities.
Half of the Colorado cities in our ranking are among those in our bottom 10. But there’s one bright spot: Denver leads the Colorado pack at No. 73, thanks to one of the highest numbers of community gardens and gardening Meetup groups among all 196 cities.
- Northern Gardening Exposure: Urban gardening clearly is tougher in colder regions. Our worst city is Anchorage, Alaska. Its one sunny quality: above-average access to gardening space, ranking No. 45 overall in this category.
Other cold cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, also fared poorly. With more frigid days, these Northern cities have to work harder at urban gardening — making the most of those warmer days and investing in greenhouses and hoop houses.
Our full ranking and analysis can be found here: https://www.lawnstarter.com/blog/studies/best-cities-urban-gardening/