Post-Pandemic Urban Garden Trend Enhances City Residents’ Well-Being

Our major cities have always been more “urban” than “jungle” when it comes to incorporating nature into the buildings where residents live. Except for a fortunate few, the average New Yorker, Chicagoan or Angeleno needs to leave home to enjoy a garden oasis in the city. That has been slowly changing in recent years – especially since Covid-19 made the benefits of natural outdoor spaces so painfully clear.

Architects, builders and developers are responding with more gardens in their condo and apartment projects, but it’s not easily achieved, given the high cost of land in many cities and competing demands for more housing. Each unit being built should each have its own plantable outdoor space, or at least access to a shared on-site garden, as one of the lessons from the pandemic demonstrated, but that doesn’t always happen. It’s a social benefit that we’re seeing this trend increase, given all of the competing challenges.