Food, Diversity, and Cultural Identity

The Rainbow Community Garden is a place for new immigrant and refugee families in Winnipeg to grow their own food. Using the Rainbow Community Garden as a case study, this paper contributes to ongoing discussions about community gardening by applying an anthropological lens to the multilayered meanings of agriculture in urban environments. This paper is focused on the benefits and challenges of community gardening in the context of new immigrant and refugee experiences. Through a literature review and interviews with gardeners, the role of food and community gardens as a means of facilitating cross cultural interactions, providing culturally appropriate food for new immigrants and refugees, and expressing cultural identity is brought into emphasis. I draw on Strunk and Richardson’s (2019) concepts of the material, imagined, and community’s garden, to reflect on the different ways in which the community garden is used and experienced by immigrant and refugee gardeners. The main conclusion of this research is that, in the context of new immigrant and refugee participation in community gardening, a garden is not only the physical soil, vegetables, and flowers, but also an important place for practicing one’s culture and for engaging in meaningful cross cultural interaction that is beneficial in adjusting to a new life in Canada.