Urban Horticulture - Paperback

by Tina Marie Waliczek (Author), Jayne M. Zajicek (Author)

In the wake of urbanization and technological advances, public green spaces within cities are disappearing and people are spending more time with electronic devices than with nature. Urban Horticulture explores the importance of horticulture to the lives, health, and well-being of urban populations. It includes contributions from experts in research and practice from across the United States, discussing the history, importance, and benefits of selected topics in urban horticulture.

This book examines types of public and private communities as well as state and federal programs to promote urban horticulture, including their history, management and administration, programming, evaluation, funding, and the benefits they provide to individuals and communities. It also reviews past and current research on school, community, public, and prison gardens. While not a straightforward textbook, it is adaptable to classroom learning, as each chapter features:

• Objectives
• Key terms
• A summary
• Review questions
• Enrichment activities
• Suggestions for further reading

The book also includes case studies and online access to examples of PowerPoint presentations that can be used in the classroom or web-based courses.

Useful for researchers, practitioners, teachers, and students, Urban Horticulture is a flexible resource that details how passive and active interaction with plants enriches people's lives. It presents several cases that illustrate how such interactions improve physical and mental health, quality of life, social well-being, and community growth.

Author Biography

Tina Marie Waliczek, PhD, is a professor of horticulture in the Department of Agriculture at Texas State University in San Marcos, overseeing the university's horticulture degree program and the management of its gardens and greenhouse. She earned her PhD at Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on urban/plant interactions, including a wide range of studies on children's gardens, community gardens, the effects of green spaces on people, the influence of gardening on perceptions of quality of life, and interior plants usage on job satisfaction and interior space in buildings. She has also researched teaching techniques in horticulture, such as studying the benefits of integrating service-learning into the horticulture curriculum. She is interested in sustainability issues such as composting and managing invasive species using large-scale composting systems and the economics of integrating cafeteria composting programs at universities. Dr. Waliczek is also a certified horticultural therapist.

Jayne Zajicek, PhD, is a professor of urban horticulture in the Department of Horticultural Sciences at Texas A&M University in College Station. She teaches urban horticulture and has developed a course titled "sociohorticulture" that fulfills the social science requirement in the university's core curriculum. She also developed the Bachelor of Arts degree program in the department, the first of its kind in a college of agriculture in the United States. She earned her PhD at Kansas State University. Her Growing Minds Research Program develops and conducts sound scientific research to evaluate the effects of gardening and horticulture in populations, including school children, at-risk youth, the elderly, mentally and physically disabled individuals, and the incarcerated. Since its inception, the Growing Minds Research Program has graduated 16 Master of Science degree and eight PhD students.