SDG 11.7 · Safer Public Spaces · Project 1 · Urban agriculture
A safe place to rest
Rest the body. Rest the mind. Then renew them both.
A community garden can be somewhere to put things down. Somewhere in the middle of the city with shade, water, food and friendly people.
This project is for urban community gardens: shared plots on public land where neighbours grow food together. The gardens are open to any member of the community. A clinician can also refer someone, alongside, not instead of, the care they already receive. For some people, company, a renewed sense of purpose and fresh food help prevent ill health in ways a prescription alone cannot reach.
We are committed to doing this transparently, and with evidence.
The idea in brief
A garden on prescription
Social prescribing means a GP or other health worker connects someone with a non-medical activity that supports their health. We make that activity an urban community garden, and we measure what changes in the person over a year.
What we learn in city plots also feeds back to organic growers beyond the city, so the garden serves the land as well as the people who tend it.
How a referral works
Anyone can join as a member. A referral is one way in, not the only one. Here is the path for someone who is referred, from a conversation with a clinician to evidence anyone can read.
-
1 Referred
A GP, psychologist or community worker suggests the garden, alongside any treatment already in place.
-
2 Welcomed
The participant joins an urban community garden as a member like any other, with a coordinator, a shared plot and people to work beside.
-
3 Checks in
Seven measures from the national wellbeing framework at the start and end of the programme. The two about violence are asked in private by a trained coordinator, never in the app. In between: feelings check-ins, writing, and a short habits log. Everything else is kept in the Garden check-in app, encrypted on the participant’s own phone.
-
4 Shares back
Participants choose whether to share results with their doctor, psychiatrist or psychologist. Findings are published openly.
The garden sits beside clinical care. It does not replace medication, therapy or crisis support.
Socio-ecological infrastructure for disaster resilience
When the shops shut, the garden stayed open.
Friendships and fresh food are part of how a city copes with a crisis. In 2022, Lismore in New South Wales, Australia, had the biggest flood on record. Supply chains broke and many supermarkets closed.
The Southern Cross University community garden stayed open. Members leaned on their friendships to help each other, and the garden kept supplying fresh fruit and vegetables.
No tolerance for physical or sexual harassment, violence or abuse
Not in our gardens, and not on the path to them. We are committed to improving on United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Target 11.7, so our gardens are safe public spaces where people can rest mind and body.
Participants in the programme have access to a psychologist, and to services that address experiences of physical and sexual harassment, violence or abuse.
Protection orders are respected
Intervention orders, apprehended violence orders, restraining orders and other protection orders are respected in every MSASpaces garden. If you are protected by an order, you can tell the garden coordinator in confidence. We will work with you so you do not have to share the garden with the person named, and your safety comes first. If an order applies to you, you must not attend in any way that would breach it.
Details of an order stay with the coordinator. They are not shared with other members and are never recorded in the app. The police enforce orders. If anyone is in danger, call 000.
A garden for mind, safety and connection
Three things. We measure them one at a time, then look at how they move together, because in a life they are never separate and each shapes how we experience the others.
What we measure
One survey section, asked at the start and again at the end of the programme. Its seven measures are taken from Measuring What Matters, Australia’s national wellbeing framework, published by the Australian Government (Treasury) in 2023. It tracks how lives are going across five themes, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reports the national figures on its Measuring What Matters dashboard. Because we ask the same questions, a garden’s results can be set beside the whole country’s. Tap any measure to see what it asks, why it is there and where it sits in the framework.
The five themes of Measuring What Matters, and where our seven measures sit
- Healthy1 measure: mental health (K10)
- Secure3 measures: feeling safe, experience of violence
- Cohesive3 measures: social connections, belonging, trust
- SustainableNot in this survey
- ProsperousNot in this survey
Mind
Safety
Connection
Tap a measure above to read about it.
The two questions about violence are never in the app. A trained coordinator asks them in private, in a safe setting, and can offer support there and then. Every question can be skipped. If a question brings something up, free support is available 24/7: 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732, and Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Results you can see
Start, end, and the national picture
Each garden’s results show where its members began, where they finished, and how that compares with the ABS figure for all Australians. Did distress and loneliness fall? Did feeling safe, belonging and trust rise?
Each person can also see their own start and end answers. They can share them with their doctor, psychiatrist or psychologist in a couple of taps, so the garden becomes part of their wider care rather than sitting apart from it.
Between the start and the end
Feelings, words and habits
Between the two surveys, the Garden check-in app gives each person a few simple tools. They help someone notice how they feel, put it into words, and bring it to the people who support them. They also show how a garden changes what people eat and drink, and how any medication works alongside time in the garden.
From a feeling to a conversation
-
1 Notice
The emotion check-in. Tap a point on the feelings map: how pleasant or unpleasant, and how much energy. Then pin the words that fit, or add your own. A reference face drawn from emotion research helps put a name to a feeling. It never tells anyone what they feel.
-
2 Put it into words
Write about it in your own words, as a short reflection or a Tree of Life story. If you choose, an AI writing helper offers gentle questions to help you find the words. It stays off until you switch it on, and nothing from your private record is sent anywhere without your consent.
-
3 Bring it to your psychologist
Share your check-ins and writing as one readable file, whenever you choose. Your psychologist can also write their own questions for the helper, so support between sessions follows their approach rather than a generic one.
The AI helper supports writing and nothing more. It does not diagnose, give treatment advice, or replace your psychologist. The words, and what happens to them, stay yours.
Food, habits and medication
A short log shows how a garden changes what people eat and drink, and how medication someone already takes works alongside garden time.
Food
Simple nutrition measures, such as serves of fruit and vegetables, so we can see whether growing food changes eating habits.
Alcohol, tobacco and coffee
Kept deliberately simple for now: three everyday substances that are easy to log and that a change in routine can shift.
Tailored with your GP
When someone registers, the log can be adapted with their GP’s help. For example, it can add a medication they take, so we can see how medication and garden time relate to outcomes.
The standard we are aiming for
Rigour we would be happy to be judged by
Our benchmark is a randomised controlled trial by Miller and colleagues (2024). They gave 1,000 low-income adults in the United States $1,000 a month for three years, and compared them with 2,000 people who received $50 a month.
They measured stress, food security, physical and mental health, clinical biomarkers and the use of health care. Then they reported plainly that, after the first year, most health measures did not improve. Measuring broadly, nutrition included, and publishing whatever we find is the standard we want for gardens too.
Miller et al., Does Income Affect Health?, NBER Working Paper w32711, 2024
- Measures chosen before we start. The seven survey measures are fixed in advance, so results cannot be picked after the fact.
- Measured at the start and the end. Every participant answers the same survey twice.
- Compared with the nation. Using ABS measures means every result sits beside a national figure.
- Published openly. Methods, code and findings go on the open project board, including results that disappoint us.
From the MSASpaces constitution
The principles behind the app
Four of the five articles of the MSASpaces Constitution shape how the app works. The second, on healing contaminated ground, guides Project 2.
Article One · We begin with a whole life, over time
We consider the lived experience of each human and non-human, observing and listening across points of time in their life so that we can understand what harms and heals their mind-body health.
Article Three · We make public space a place to recover
We are offering opportunities to individuals and communities, both human and non-human, within public spaces which support a sense of recovery after psychological and physical trauma. Connecting them with professional and interdisciplinary networks of support for their long-term well-being.
Article Four · We help people step into new harmonious relationships
We are guiding individuals and communities on their journey to become part of new realities that reduce the acts and incidents of coercive control, stalking, harassment and violence; combatting aggressive emotions which attempt to claim an authoritative position which discriminates unfairly against others thereby preventing new harmonious realities.
Article Five · We watch how feelings shape places, and places shape feelings
We focus with research and co-design invitations how human feelings and beliefs influence behaviour which shapes the creation of man-made environments and link this with how these environments influence behaviour which shapes our feelings and beliefs.
Why gardens? Read further
Four sources we build on, each in a few lines, with a link to the full text.
Australian Government · 2023
Measuring What Matters
Australia’s first national wellbeing framework sets out how the country tracks whether lives are going well, across five themes: healthy, secure, sustainable, cohesive and prosperous. Our survey uses seven of its measures, from the healthy, secure and cohesive themes, so a garden can report against the same yardstick as the nation. The ABS publishes the national results on the Measuring What Matters dashboard.
Australian Government, Measuring What Matters statement, 2023
Randomised trial · 2023
Community gardening, tested properly
In Denver, 291 adults who had not gardened before were randomly given a community garden plot or placed on a wait list. By autumn the gardeners ate more fibre and were more active, and reported less stress and anxiety.
Nationwide cohort · 2019
Green space in childhood
A Danish study of more than 900,000 people found that children who grew up with the least green space near home had up to 55% higher risk of later psychiatric disorders, after adjusting for other known risk factors. It shows an association, not proof of cause.
Network meta-analysis · 2026
Medication, and what surrounds it
A review of 41 studies found antipsychotics reduce hostility in schizophrenia over weeks to months, though confidence in the evidence was low. The authors suggest pairing medication with psychosocial support for longer-term benefit. We want to test whether a garden can be one place that support happens.
Build it with us
All of our code and publications follow open-science, copyleft principles, apart from the MSASpaces trademark. You can use, adapt and share what we publish, as long as you release your version under the same terms. Protocols, trial designs, the app code and every open question sit on the MSASpaces project board.
If you write code, run a garden, work in mental health, know statistics, translate, design, or simply have an afternoon and an opinion, there is a job on that board with your name on it. You do not need permission and you do not need to be an expert. Pick something small and start.
GitHub · Open project board · Anyone can read
Reading needs no account. You need a free GitHub account to comment or take on an issue.
Bring us a garden
We are looking for urban community gardens willing to try the social prescribing programme. You do not need funding or a research background. You need a plot, someone to run it, and a willingness to write things down. The app is ready. If you would like to take part, send us an email.