Engaging Diverse Communities Through Community Gardening Rebecca Ellis Presented at Sustain Ontario’s Bring Food Home conference October 2017 The urban agriculture movement has grown steadily in North American cities, particularly in the last two decades. While urban agriculture movements have the potential to be transformative, providing multiple important benefits to individuals, neighbourhoods, and cities (Levkoe 2010); critics have pointed out the complicated, contradictory, and sometimes destructive role they can play in relation to broader structures of injustice and oppression (Pudup 2010; McIvor and Hale 2015). Nevertheless, community gardens have the potential to bring greater social justice and inclusion to urban neighbourhoods. In this paper, I will explore the ways in which community gardens can best meet the needs of a diversity of people in the neighbourhoods in which they are situated. In particular, I will look at the best practices of several community garden initiatives at engaging with and involving - in meaningful ways - members of marginalized and/or vulnerable communities including racialized people, newly arrived immigrant and refugees, and/or people who are living in poverty. Part 1 examines the importance of community gardening in North America. Part 2 examines the challenges and barriers experienced by marginalized and/or vulnerable communities in community garden projects. Part 3 examines projects that have been successful at integrating vulnerable and/or marginalized communities. Part 4 proposes strategies to increase diversity in community garden projects in Ontario. Part 1: The importance of community gardens Since the 1970s, the amount of and interest in community garden projects in North American cities has grown exponentially. Although there is some debate in the urban agriculture literature about the definition of community gardening, this paper will focus on