Trees in Home Gardens: Making the Most of an Age-Old Practice to Improve Food Security and Nutrition

The document argues that multi-layered home gardens incorporating trees, shrubs, and crops enhance food security, nutrition, and climate resilience. It identifies key barriers to their development, such as insecure land tenure and water scarcity, and suggests that integrating home gardens into climate finance mechanisms like REDD+ could provide new opportunities for expansion.

• Home gardens significantly supplement diets in areas where staple-crop monocultures are insufficient for complete nutrition. In Sri Lanka, urban home gardens are estimated to provide 50-60% of leafy vegetables and 20% of all vegetables consumed by households.
• Multi-layered gardens with trees and shrubs increase resilience to climate shocks. Mature perennials act as a safety net during droughts, and in Burkina Faso, mango trees are specifically valued because their fruits ripen during the dry season when food shortages are common.
• Home gardens provide critical environmental services, including biodiversity conservation and carbon capture. In Sri Lanka, they have served as refuges for wildlife and connected fragmented natural forests. A study in the Moneragala district showed that the most densely planted and biodiverse gardens had the highest carbon stocks, averaging 26 Mg C ha-1.
• Land tenure is a primary constraint to the adoption of agroforestry in home gardens because trees require years to mature. Households without land ownership lack the incentive to plant long-term crops. Conversely, land reforms in Vietnam providing 50-year land rights have encouraged long-term investments in tree planting.
• Water access is a critical limiting factor in arid regions. In Bonogo, Burkina Faso, low groundwater levels and restrictions on using pumped well water for irrigation hinder the establishment of trees. Similarly, water availability in South Africa's Eastern Cape limits the variety of crops that can be grown.
• Gender inequality affects home garden productivity, as women often cultivate the gardens but lack legal or social control over key resources and property rights.
• There is potential to use climate finance, such as REDD+ programmes, to support home gardens, though this may create trade-offs between financial incentives and nutritional benefits depending on the species selected.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (n.d.). Trees in Home Gardens: Making the Most of an Age-Old Practice to Improve Food Security and Nutrition. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SIANI-Focali-2014-Home-gardens-food-security.pdf

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Trees in Home Gardens: Making the Most of an Age-Old Practice to Improve Food Security and Nutrition. n.d. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SIANI-Focali-2014-Home-gardens-food-security.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Trees in Home Gardens: Making the Most of an Age-Old Practice to Improve Food Security and Nutrition |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SIANI-Focali-2014-Home-gardens-food-security.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitutendtrees, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Trees in Home Gardens: Making the Most of an Age-Old Practice to Improve Food Security and Nutrition}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SIANI-Focali-2014-Home-gardens-food-security.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }