Community gardens offer broad research opportunities and analytical resources encompassing urban planning to environmental sustainability, food systems, and social capital. However, little is known about the knowledge structure and research development related to community gardens. This study presents an in-depth bibliometric performance analysis and visual scientific mapping analysis of the literature on community gardens by examining 487 published papers selected from the Web of Science database. The results indicated a considerable rise in research papers in this subject area from 2012 onwards, with most contributions from the United States. Studies from high-income countries accounted for 93.22%, and 38 countries have cooperated 167 times in this field. “Health” is the most frequent keyword, and the terms “ecosystem services” has been gaining popularity over the last five years. A combination of co-citation clustering and keyword co-occurrence clustering analysis identified three major research themes in the field of community gardens: “ecosystem services and disservices”, “multidimensional association”, and “sustainable garden systems”. The development of ecosystem value assessment frameworks, the establishment of region-wide soil monitoring databases, accounting for the cost-effectiveness of nature-based solutions, the integration of garden systems into smart cities, and the integration of water management into regulation will be important future research directions regarding community gardens. Overall, this study provides scholars with a systematic and quantitative understanding of community gardens.

Allotment gardens (AGs) are widely used in metropolitan areas around the world to offer agricultural opportunities to urban residents. However, there are not enough individual plots for residents to rent for urban gardening, and research on AGs from a city-wide perspective is ongoing. In addition, AGs have a long history in Tokyo, yet few international studies on the current situation of AGs have addressed Asian cities. Thus, this study intends to analyze the provision of AGs and its influencing factors in Tokyo. Using ArcGIS combined the 472-points dataset created by geo-coordinate mapping with urban GIS data to reveal spatial characteristics in four dimensions. Results demonstrate that most AGs are in the urbanization promotion area; most municipalities have AGs; AGs are concentrated within 20 to 30 km from the center of Tokyo; the AGs’ clusters are located at the municipal boundaries. We conducted multiple regressions to determine the influencing factors at the municipal level, with the provision that AGs are related to population density, land price, and the ratio of productive green space. The policy implication of this study is that policymakers need to consider the siting strategy of AGs based on spatial characteristics of AGs.