Search

Oriented strand board (OSB) has become a popular building material for residential construction, but little research has been conducted on its use as a finish floor material. The study investigated the quality and performance of OSB as an alternative to traditional engineered wood products for finish floors. Four types of OSB finish floors using a mixture of garden and urban tree toppings were produced and evaluated, along with different types and levels of resin and mat moisture content. The finish floor panels were subjected to a battery of tests, including concentrated loading, indentation, falling ball impact resistance, abrasion resistance, and surface wettability. The findings showed that urea formaldehyde resin with garden tree toppings performed best in floor surface indentation, abrasion resistance, and falling ball indentation. The phenol formaldehyde resin with garden tree toppings, on the other hand, showed less moisture absorption and swelling during surface wetting tests and better resistance to force application in the concentrated loading test. Our qualitative comparison revealed that OSB finish floor production using 100% garden tree topping strands and 12% urea formaldehyde resin, along with 14% mat moisture content, produced the best results. The study provides valuable insights into the potential use of OSB as a sustainable and cost-effective finish floor material, using waste materials from urban and garden tree toppings., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Gardening has the potential to enhance health and well-being, through increased physical activity and social connectedness. However, while much is known about the benefits of garden activities, less is known about the potential health implications of more passive forms of engagement with gardens, for example, viewing gardens. In addition, much garden research is undertaken in urban settings, leaving little known about potential health impacts for rural populations. The present study explored these research gaps by gaining an understanding of the experiences and perspectives of members of a gardening appreciation group in rural Australia: The Colac Horticultural and Marvellous Property Appreciation Society (CHAMPAS). A phenomenological, qualitative methodology was applied, using semi-structured interviews for data collection. Eleven participants were selected using purposive and snowball sampling and the data were analysed by applying interpretive, reflexive thematic analysis. Four main themes and supporting sub-themes were generated. The four main themes were: (i) motivations for maintaining participation in CHAMPAS; (ii) social connections and friendships, formed from membership; (iii) sense of community and structure of CHAMPAS and (iv) the perceived health and well-being benefits of continued involvement in this group. This study found that members perceived health and well-being benefits stemmed from CHAMPAS facilitation of social connectedness, function as a community group and a way for members to share a love for home gardening. This study provides insights into the perceived and potential health-promoting effects of garden appreciation groups for rural populations., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Urban gardens can support diverse bee communities through resource provision in resource poor environments. Yet the effects of local habitat and landscape factors on wild bee communities in cities is still insufficiently understood, nor is how this information could be applied to urban wildlife conservation. Here we investigate how taxonomic and functional diversity of wild bees and their traits in urban community gardens are related to garden factors and surrounding landscape factors (e.g., plant diversity, amount of bare ground, amount of nesting resources, amount of landscape imperviousness). Using active and passive methods in 18 community gardens in Berlin, Germany, we documented 26 genera and 102 species of bees. We found that higher plant species richness and plant diversity as well as higher amounts of deadwood in gardens leads to higher numbers of wild bee species and bee (functional) diversity. Furthermore, higher landscape imperviousness surrounding gardens correlates with more cavity nesting bees, whereas a higher amount of bare ground correlates with more ground-nesting bees. Pollen specialization was positively associated with plant diversity, but no factors strongly predicted the proportion of endangered bees. Our results suggest that, aside from foraging resources, nesting resources should be implemented in management for more pollinator-friendly gardens. If designed and managed using such evidence-based strategies, urban gardens can create valuable foraging and nesting habitats for taxonomically and functionally diverse bee communities in cities., (© 2022 The Authors. Ecological Applications published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.)

The Red Books represented the most important working tool of landscape architect Humphry Repton (1752-1818). To give his clients an impression of his suggestions for improvement, he used an artifice that can be understood as montage. After all, his method reveals a certain similarity to the architectural montage used by director Sergei M. Eisenstein in his essay »Piranesi, or the Fluidity of Form«. Eisenstein, however, in both his works as a director and a theoretician, aimed at overcoming a realism that had defined bourgeois art in the 19th century. Trough the work of Repton, on the other hand, the landscape garden, once an aristocratic privilege, was transformed into a bourgeois consumer good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing strategies that counter the ongoing homogenization trends of home-garden agroforestry systems is required to maintain diversity and sustainability. This study aimed to map and characterize traditional enset-based home-garden agroforestry for managing sustainability in the Gurage socioecological landscape in Ethiopia. We generated plots and land use land cover (LULC) spatial data from orthophotomosaic and collected household survey data of the field. Five home-garden types were identified explicitly through integrating the home-garden composition, functional structure, and agroecological zones. Most home-garden types had similar horizontal functional structures in which perennial crops were planted close to homesteads, annual crops grew in outer fields, and woodlots were located at the end of the parcel. Diverse woody species, crop varieties, and plot sizes were identified in individual household parcels, and these varied across the home-garden types. Enset-based home-garden agroforestry production has been declining in the Ethiopian landscape because of socioeconomic changes and a lack of technological inputs. These challenges may compromise the community's food security with loss of the product diversity provided by the home-garden system. Thus, technological adoptions and scaling up of agroforestry practices according to the home-garden types are necessary for the continue provision of multiple contributions. This study demonstrated site-specific spatial characterization of the agroforestry systems by considering a holistic approach to reduce the local challenges and support the development of sustainable landscape management in an altering socioecological landscape., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The study was conducted in Ludhiana District of Punjab (India) to understand the organic waste management practices followed by dairy farmers of the area. To investigate the practices pertaining to organic waste management, an ex-post facto research design was used and a total of 80 dairy farmers were selected randomly for the study, grouped as small and large dairy farmers. Results revealed that the majority of the farmers were using paddy straw as animal bedding followed by in situ burning. As far as paddy stubbles were concerned, most of the farmers were mulching them followed by in situ burning. All farmers were found to be using wheat straw as livestock feed and mulching wheat stubbles. For household waste, the majority of the farmers were found to be feeding kitchen waste to their livestock, preparing farmyard manure from garden waste and paper waste. For dairy waste management, all the farmers were preparing farmyard manure from dung and discarding livestock urine in drains. A little more than half of the farmers were producing biogas from the dairy waste. The majority of the dairy farmers of the research area were found to have low organic waste utilization scores. Relational analysis was carried out and social participation and knowledge level were found to be highly significant (p < 0.01) with a positive effect on the organic waste utilization score. Therefore, the study was concluded with the impression that the knowledge level of the farmers needs to be enhanced for better and effective utilization of organic waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the growing importance of the field of chemobrionics since the term was coined in 2015 and the increase in the number of published papers, it has become necessary to catalogue all the papers published to date. Here, we present the chemobrionics database, which lists all the chemical gardens synthesised according to their anion, cation and experimental protocol. The aim of this database is to encourage the study and dissemination of chemical gardens in order to find new experimental avenues in the field of chemobrionics. As this is such a fruitful field, the database is continuously updated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]