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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.)

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This paper focuses on the doing of gardens and explores how amateur gardeners relate to gardening craft in their everyday garden practices. Based on qualitative empirical work, this paper discusses how different craft methods and caring practices are employed as memory work and as a means to connect to, and create, the garden as a socio-ecological place. Based on the gardeners' narratives, the garden is discussed as a web of self and a place where the meeting between the gardener and the more-than-human are central incentives to gardening. Gardening is an active place-making that goes beyond modifying the materiality of place. Rather, garden craft is narrated as reflecting the gardeners' underlying relationship to and understanding of plants, soil and animals. It is the means through which gardeners connect in an embodied way to 'the nature' of the garden. Garden craft is proposed as an art that is passed on between generations. Gardening craft can be improved by an increased understanding of the temporality of the garden and by developing a sensitivity towards the complex socio-ecological relationships that shape a place. It is concluded that garden craft is understood as central not only to how the garden is constructed as a place but also to how the gardener relates to the garden as affecting, and being affected by, the current environmental crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural institutions hold a unique position of influence, serving as hubs of education and knowledge dissemination for the people they serve. Embracing sustainable energy use in buildings in zoos and botanical gardens is a commitment to environmental responsibility that reinforces these institutions as trusted sources of information and community leaders on climate change, one of the most vital issues of our time. Sustainable energy solutions can synergize operations with educational missions, allowing zoos and botanical gardens to lead by example and inspire visitors to adopt eco-friendly practices in their own lives. In this opinion paper, Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens President and CEO Richard Piacentini discusses key elements in developing a sustainable building energy plan, reviews potential barriers to implementation, and makes a case for adopting regenerative thinking and new metrics for measuring success—citing example cases from Phipps' Center for Sustainable Landscapes (CSL) project. Additionally, the paper demonstrates how green building certification systems and peer-based resource networks like The Climate Toolkit can help guide institutions in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With this paper we explore and discuss the priorities of and possible goal conflicts between authenticity and climate change in heritage gardens. How can climate change mitigation, adaptation, resilience, and cultural heritage conservation be combined in heritage gardens? Our study was guided by the following research question: How do gardeners negotiate climate change and authenticity in heritage gardens? From Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in the 1960s through to the 2002 report Gardening in the Global Greenhouse and the recent Gardening in a Changing World in 2022 mankind's impact on the environment and the emerging climate change has been the focus of increasing attention. By investigating and interviewing multiple gardeners our objective was to pinpoint common challenges, as well as what can be learned from one another within the field of gardening and heritage conservation. The case study method was adopted for this study, involving three head gardeners in the United Kingdom. Interviews were conducted with Joseph Atkin at Aberglasney Gardens, Claire Greenslade at Hestercombe Gardens, and Steve Lannin at Iford Manor about their expertise and knowledge. The gardeners expressed concern regarding climate change and the challenges it poses. The interviewees shared their experience with drought, reduced use of pesticides and herbicides, and the peat legislation in relation to their role as head gardeners. We argue that authenticity and the traditional gardening practised before the advent of power tools, plastic, peat issues, and uninformed transportation can be part of the solution to loss of biodiversity and climate change. This paper identifies some of the obstacles encountered in relation to negotiating questions of authenticity and climate change in heritage gardens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper establishes interpretative criteria for the aesthetic evaluation of contemporary gardens and parks, specifically focusing on a dendrological park. Initially, it examines the potential of a "contract with nature" as a foundational basis for such evaluation but subsequently challenges this notion. The paper posits that political and material-ecological aspects significantly influence aesthetic judgments in these spaces. It argues that these elements are integral to eliciting a direct aesthetic experience and necessitates explicit explication in their interpretation. This study further interprets gardens and parks as akin to works of art in that they represent, albeit without conventional subject matter, the nuanced relationships to the lives of individuals. The paper elucidates the more profound, often unspoken dialogues between nature, culture, and individual experience by viewing these spaces as representational mediums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the multimedia information comprehensive development of multimedia culture, the traditional technology of many industries and advanced mobile technology develop in concert. Ancient Chinese gardens have a long history. They are rich in content, outstanding in style, and full of characteristics. They have great aesthetic value and are the valuable property of all mankind. This paper discusses the environmental expression, spatial layout, and element combination in traditional garden art. The study of landscape design techniques involves different subjects. Through the developed mobile multimedia information, the traditional garden design is more rich, separation but not blocking, desire to promote first restraint, twists and turns, appropriate scale, borrowing from afar and borrowing from neighbors. The application of these expression techniques in modern interior design is of great significance. By using the ancient gardens of our country to reflect the civilization products of our country in a certain historical stage, the paper traces its development ideas and motives and analyzes the consistency with the corresponding contemporary ideological development. From the perspective of space design, this paper discusses the influence of ancient gardens on contemporary space creation from the aspects of space type, structure form, and space language. How to apply the reference means of ancient Chinese garden design to modern interior decoration through multimedia information so that the interior space can also experience the aesthetic pleasure of "changing scenery" so that the traditional landscape and modern interior decoration can be more fully integrated. This is something designers have to think about. Chinese ancient gardens have always been the focus of domestic design circles. Both the ideas behind it and its own gardening techniques can be used for reference by contemporary interior design. Therefore, the main content of this paper is the foundation of the transformation mechanism of traditional garden in contemporary design through multimedia information. Based on the framework system of contemporary indoor natural landscape or indoor natural landscape as the background, this paper discusses how to use virtual reality technology for reference to the gardening techniques of classical Chinese gardens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "John Stokes and Mary's Gardens Collection" which contains the personal papers of author John Stogdell Stokes Jr. and the records of his organization Mary's Gardens, and also include biography of Stokes.

Along with the accelerating urbanization process in China, the problem of urban infrastructure layout has become increasingly prominent. The high density of buildings and the extremely unreasonable distribution of infrastructure make the development face great resistance. This paper reveals the problems in the layout of garden infrastructure by studying and analyzing the theoretical foundations of federal learning and distributed learning and provides an in-depth analysis and elaboration of the problem. The paper uses the shape index and landscape index of green infrastructure (green space, arable land, and water bodies), the average width of roads, road network density, and weighted buildings to conduct a comparative study through the differences in ventilation speed and temperature at different layout garden scales. According to the problems existing in the garden layout in the experimental results, corresponding improvement measures are targeted, and the infrastructure layout of the garden is combined with ecology to make the layout within the garden more suitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]