Supporting Garden Intervention Design and Implementation

Gardening is a widely implemented intervention in development programming that can deliver positive results in nutrition, agricultural income and women’s empowerment. In Ethiopia, projects have used gardens to strengthen household resilience and nutrition. In Timor Leste, mothers were taught about gardens to increase dietary diversity. In Burkina Faso, large irrigated communal plots were successfully developed for women’s groups to support food diversification and revenue generation. In Kenya, farmers invested in shade netting to increase productivity for home consumption and market sales. In Nicaragua, farmers established highly commercial production plots linked to supermarkets.

With significant use of gardens in development programming, it is important to centralize good practices in a toolkit. As successful and sustainable garden interventions require expertise from many sectors—agriculture, nutrition, gender, water resources, marketing, postharvest handling, behavior change, and monitoring and evaluation—this toolkit reflects these sector-specific areas of expertise. The Garden Toolkit draws on the experience of Catholic Relief Services field practitioners and shares insights across countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

Garden Resource Guide

The 13 chapters of the Garden Resource Guide bring together sectoral expertise cutting across agriculture, nutrition, behavior change, water resources, gender, post-harvest handling, marketing, behavior change, and monitoring and evaluation fields. This resource supports readers in refreshing their existing knowledge as well as learning how sectors beyond their expertise support garden interventions.

Garden Project Design Guide

This Guide is used to design garden interventions during the proposal development stage. It includes a series of steps that help teams decide on the purpose of the garden, a decision-tree to confirm a garden is appropriate, assessment questions to guide garden decision and guidance on monitoring and evaluation. Key questions to help ensure the design is appropriate have teams think through garden types and crops to be promoted as well as additional technical and financial support for sustainable gardens and the ability to scale gardens. Additional technical support may include gender integration, nutrition, marketing, soil health, integrated pest and disease management, seed supply, water resources, and postharvest storage and processing.

Garden Project Design Worksheet

The worksheet accompanies the Garden Project Design Guide. It is a form that the design team uses to capture key decisions made when he/she follows the process described in the Garden Project Design Guide that concludes the process with a short paragraph on the garden intervention that can be included in a proposal.

Garden Program Managers Guide

The Garden Program Managers Guide offers a process that supports the program manager in validating the garden design and developing an implementation plan.

Garden Program Managers Worksheet

The worksheet accompanies the Garden Program Manager Guide. It is a form that the program manager uses to capture key decisions made when he/she follows the process described in the Garden Program Manager Guide for validating the garden design and developing the garden implementation plan.

Establishing and Growing a Productive Garden Lesson Plans

Establishing and Growing a Productive Garden Lesson Plans was developed for the Feed the Future Ethiopia Livelihoods for Resilience – Oromia project. The lesson plans were guided by the garden design guide, content was drawn from the garden resource guide and tailored to the project context. A job aid is available to accompany the lesson plans when delivering the content to community members.

Establishing and Growing a Productive Garden Job Aid

This bilingual job aid (English and Afaan Omoro) was developed for the Feed the Future Ethiopia Livelihoods for Resilience – Oromia project to accompany the lesson plans on Establishing and Growing a Productive Garden. The job aid is used when delivering the lesson plans to community members to illustrate the key points and activities.

Related Resources

• Transforming Lives in Ethiopia with Gardens
• Home Gardens Support Good Nutrition: Megha's Story
• To Consume or to Sell