Evaluating Importance of Community Gardens in Times of Calm and Crisis: From Relaxation to Food Self-Provisioning
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments to “Evaluating the importance of community gardens in times of calm and crisis: from relaxation to food self-provisioning”.
I found this paper interesting and well-written. The experimental design is fairly clear and structured. The findings are conclusive and supported by the analysis.
The paper suffers from some minor structural shortages that should be fixed before publication.
Specific comments
Line 153: if I understand correctly, here you are reporting a piece of your results (lines 153-160). Therefore, I suggest moving this part to the Results section. In the Material and methods, you should just state what did you do and how.
Line 169: Also in this case, you are showing a piece of your results (lines 169-170). I suggest moving this part to the Result section.
Line 215: Here you are showing the results in the MM section (lines 215-222). I suggest moving this part to the Result section.
Line 226-246: Once again, you reported the results in the MM section. For example, the fact that one person stopped visiting the garden is something you knew after you collected and analyzed the data. Therefore, I suggest moving this part to the Result section.
Table 1: Here you considered 3 regulation ESs. However, there are many more (e.g biodiversity conservation, soil protection, temperature mitigation). This is one of the reasons why Regulation ESs are monetarily worth less compared to the others. Therefore, you should at least mention this fact, maybe in a “limitations” paragraph.
Results: I suggest you add some visual information about the questionnaire's attendance. This would improve the perception of who actually took part in the survey.
Discussion: I would expect something more in the Discussion section. For example, you state: […] that the primary function of CGs is providing cultural ES (i.e., recreation, enjoyment of gardening and opportunities to socialize). Why is that? Do you have any hypotheses? Is this only true for the COVID-19 scenario?.
I suggest you to read the following paper:
Lausi L., Amodio M., Sebastiani A.*, Fusaro L., Manes F. (2022). Assessing Cultural Ecosystem Services during the Covid-19 pandemic at the Garden of Ninfa (Italy). Annali di Botanica, 12, 63-75. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13133/2239-3129/17681.
Here, the Authors specifically discuss the role of cultural ESs provided by a historical garden during the COVID-19 pandemic and may help you enrich the discussion.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
I was intrigued to read your paper due to its relevant and innovative objective – comparing the benefits of CG in three different, yet timely scenarios. The use of mixed methodology also seemed very promising. However, the potential of the paper is not yet realized in its current form. I hope that my comments can help improve it.
1. The key and relatively major revision relates to lack of clarity, in the current manuscript, in what data was collected, when, through which methods, how it was analyzed and which results it informed. Perhaps a table or scheme can adrress most of the following issues, together with some changes to the structure of the text:
- You need to be more transparent regarding the time span of your research. The 3 scenarios you compare relate to specific points in time – namely the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in food prices in January 2023 (mentioned on lines 162-165). However, it appears that most (?) data was collected in 2021, comparing therefore members‘ self-reported perceptions of past („no crisis“) and hypothetical future scenarios, rather than actual evolution of the CG in time (except for the numbers of its members).
- The structure of the paper and the section headings require attention to improve coherence. In section 2.2 and 2.3 under “Materials and methods”, you already report some of your results, while you have not yet introduced all methods. The more quantitative data used in the study is only mentioned under 2.4 "data analysis".
- Please clarify which data sets were used: you refer to QS among six long-time members (line 196) but also a questionnaire where you received 157 responses (line 208) - were all of these used, or only the 6? on line 379 you mention "several follow-up surveys in other CGs" but these do not seem to be presented in methods and materials.
- For which scenario were the interview and questionnaire data used, which ES did they inform and how were they translated into monetary terms? you might consider including a table or scheme with an overview of all data used, in relation to each scenario and ES.
2. Regarding your results, the comparison of the 3 scenarios seems really promising, but the results reported in section 3.1 are rather thin - it is not clear how they are derived from the data, and most of the differences between the 3 scenarios seem rather self-evident: e.g. if CG members cannot meet due to the pandemic, it is clear that the social interaction and educational ES will decrease. If more space is dedicated to FSP in the third scenario, obviously the provisioning ES will increase. I am not convinced about the added value of the monetization presented in table 1.
Furthermore, I have several concerns regarding the methods used for the monetary quantification of ES, and your interpretation of this analysis:
- please clarify the term "benefit transfer" (277)
- food production accounts for a key difference in the 3 scenarios, monetarily speaking. it therefore seems relevant to shed more light on how you collected data on the amount of food produced, and how you translated this into monetary values - the brief note on l. 292 does not clarify this sufficiently.
- On l. 293, why did you decide to assess aesthetic improvement in terms of rent increase? Did rents indeed increase in the vicinity of the CG and if so, would you view this as a positive development?
- L 310- you mention "greater" water retention and runoff regulation but it is unclear what is the comparison point - greater compared to other scenarios? You conclude that environmental ES remained unchanged, and figure 2 seems to indicate that runoff regulation is indeed the same, whereas water retention is higher in the FSP scenario - can you explain why?
- under 3.2, please clarify your expressions - you talk about "most important monetarily valued" and "most significant monetized ES", but I believe none of the reported benefits are in fact monetized (in the sense that nobody actually pays for these ES). Instead, money is used as a unit to compare diverse ES benefit. Your phrasing should reflect that.
3. Apart from these relatively major concerns, below are other minor suggestions:
- The first paragraph of the introduction, where you discuss motivations for urban gardening, could use more nuance and contextualization. It is quite well documented that first allotment gardens in Europe also served to compensate for poor housing conditions, and provided gardeners with a sense of fulfilment and meaningful work, as well as healthier environment. Your summary of "habit and food provision" does not capture this sufficiently. CG in the US also had important political meanings which you don't mention. Geography might in fact matter here - I would advise you to distinguish which studies can be referred to for general benefits of urban gardening, and which are geographically specific. You should also distinguish between CG and other forms of FSP when referring to literature – e.g. references on l 71 seem a bit arbitrary - it doesn't seem that the studies focus specifically on community gardening.
- Please clarify your argument around l. 72. The sentence "As interest in FSP increases, so does the importance of provisioning ES" seems circular. If interest in FSP increases, could you support that with references? You say at lines 75-77 that gardeners are motivated by different reasons - is the increase in interest related to FSP, or CG in general? And how does this relate to the self-sufficiency levels reported by Czech gardeners (lines 73-73)?
- I am not convinced of the relevance of Figure 1 - perhaps a photograph or a plan of the garden would be more illustrative than a map of the country. In presenting your case, could tell a bit more about the users of the garden? Seeing that increased food prices are a factor in your scenarios, it might be useful to have an insight in the users' demographics and income level, as well as the membership fees.
In my view, it is uncommon to present new results in the discussion (as you do on lines 382 and 390), which should mostly contextualize the results already presented. conversely, some points are repeated unnecessarily (see lines 384-385, 388 and 393-394).
The quality of the paper's language is high, although at some points (mentioned in my comments above) more precise formulations could improve the argument.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
thank you for revising your manuscript. I believe that the changes you made improved on its quality and it is now ready to be published. Congratulations on your work.
I recommend copy-editing to improve the quality of the English language particularly in the newly added sections.
Author Response
Comment: I recommend copy-editing to improve the quality of the English language particularly in the newly added sections.
Response:
· The revised version of the manuscript have been edited by professional editor. As non-native speakers, we always have the language of our articles proofread. Only our responses to the reviewers' comments were not checked.
