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Growing concerns with air-pollution, contaminated drinking water, and deteriorated sewerage infrastructures contributed to an increasing environmental awareness in Vietnam during the past decade. At urban sites, such as herbal gardens in Hanoi, these ecological concerns converge with medicinal itineraries of East Asian herbal medications and the health of a rising middle-class. In these emerging chemosocial configurations, public health becomes an environmental issue, and the city holds out the promise of a resilient space of planetary health. To illustrate such lateral movements, this article focuses on the cultivation and transplantation of medicinal plants in central Hanoi. Thinking through the question of how people and herbs come to cultivate and be cultivated by one another, I argue, helps to understand the public health stakes of chemosocial infrastructures in a rapidly urbanizing Vietnam and, more generally, in urban transformations throughout Asia. At stake both in the transformation of plants into pharmaceutical products and in the modes of transplanting knowledges and methods from one world (or discipline) to another is the lateral mobility between East Asian medical practices and STS methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically engages with the increasingly prevalent concept and practice of "urban experimentation" and associated transformations towards sustainability. Too often, the paper argues, urban experiments are assessed from a diffusion-oriented perspective which foregrounds questions of how to replicate lessons from (similar) experiments across (similar) places. This common perspective implies an over-emphasis of unifying visions and rationales at the expense of diverging interpretations of "sustainability"; a neglect of "unsuccessful" experiments and questions of persistence; and an over-focus on certain types of – "green" or "creative" – places while disregarding the emergence and characteristics of experiments in more ordinary urban geographies. To address these issues, the paper introduces a novel methodological approach, combining a metropolitan geodemographic typology with qualitative data on 166 active and inactive urban agriculture initiatives across London. Varying socio-spatial patterns of experimentation are discussed, illustrating how contextual differences at neighbourhood levels matter. The paper demonstrates that neglecting the diversity of urban socio-economic, demographic, and physical contexts may lead to the erroneous suggestion that only places privileged by certain demographics can "achieve" sustainability and points to the significance of experiments beyond narrow ideas of novelty and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an agent-based model that explores the conditions for ongoing participation in community gardening projects. We test the effects of Ostrom's well-known Design Principles for collective action and use an extensive database collected in 123 cases in Germany and two case studies in the Netherlands to validate it. The model uses the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework and integrates decision mechanisms derived from the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). This allows the analysis of volunteer participation in urban community gardens over time, based on the garden's institutions (Design Principles) and the volunteer's intention to join gardening. This intention is influenced by the volunteer's expectations and past experiences in the garden (TRA). We find that not all Design Principles lead to higher levels of participation but rather, participation depends on specific combinations of the Design Principles. We highlight the need to update the assumption about sanctioning in such systems: sanctioning is not always beneficial, and may be counter-productive in certain contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alongside kindred civic-driven and place-based urban greening initiatives, studies document an upsurge over the last decade in urban gardening and alternative food initiatives across a range of Euro-American settings. Meanwhile, historical and cultural inquiries into urban design, planning and politics suggest that the place and role of 'nature' in the city is now undergoing significant shifts. In this article, we deploy a case study of a civic-driven permaculture garden in Copenhagen in order to suggest a novel analytical grid of the imaginative and material domain of public aesthetic norms shaping current-day tensions over interventions in and valuations of the fabric of multiform green-spaces in the city. Reading across existing literatures, we model this domain along two structuring axes – of 'orderliness' versus 'wildness' and 'pastoral nature' versus city-nature 'imbrication' – and illustrate the usefulness of the resulting grid for making sense of internal debates and external criticisms in the Copenhagen permaculture gardening case. By assisting us in explaining how and why this garden struggled to carve out a legitimate space in a city otherwise committed to urban nature, we argue that attention to variable urban-green aesthetic commitments helps recast questions of urban sustainability politics in important ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Wildlife-friendly' gardening is a dominant theme in the media that readily engages public attention. However, there is little empirical evidence of the ecological benefits of increased habitat quality of individual domestic gardens. This study uses light-trapping to examine the response of moth assemblages to domestic gardens that are assessed in terms of their habitat complexity (simple and complex) both within the garden and extending out to a 30 m radius that includes surrounding habitats. The results clearly show that moth assemblages were influenced by complex habitats (particularly increasing levels of the variable shrubs and decreasing levels of artificial surfaces), but only at a scale that extended beyond the garden boundary to include the surrounding area. In other words, neither the complexity of the habitat within the garden or the size of the garden had any influence on the abundance or diversity of the moth assemblage. These results have implications for both garden management and landscape planning – if domestic gardens are to be a useful component of strategies to reduce biodiversity loss within the urban environment then they should provide good habitat quality and be managed as a network of interconnected patches rather than as individual units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates how a smaller southern city engaged broader planning approaches. Civic leaders, especially women, pushed and partnered with municipal administrations to beautify Augusta, Georgia, a city with extraordinarily wide streets and a long tradition of urban horticulture. Their efforts in the 1900s to 1950s, often in concert with close by planners, led to a confluence of urban beautification, historic preservation, and downtown revitalization in the 1960s. This coordinated activity reshaped Augusta's cityscape, exacerbated racial tensions, and enshrined principles of the City Beautiful, Garden City, and parks movements long after they receded in large cities, influencing the work of nationally prominent planners commissioned in the 1970s and 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excavation work carried out at Istres and Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (Provence, Southern France), in the framework of preventive archaeology, uncovered evidence of ancient gardens (13/14th–17th centuries), equipped with lined wells. Significant numbers of waterlogged remains of fruit species as well as legumes and condiments provided information on the availability of "healthy" foods to complement and diversify the daily diet of urban dwellers, largely dependent on bread. Other herbaceous plants reflecting the background environment of this agriculture-arboriculture production are also identified (weeds, ruderals, plants from meadows and other humid habitats etc.). The archaeobotanical assemblage identified in both sites also includes Ricinus communis, a highly toxic plant. As far as we know this is the first time Ricinus seeds are recorded by archaeobotany in Europe. The likely significance of this discovery is discussed taking into account the archaeological and palaeoenvironmental contexts of the findings and the known history of this plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization is increasingly compromising residents' connection to natural habitats and landscapes. With established relationships between human–nature connection (HNC) and pro-environmental behaviour and human well being, there are calls for effective interventions to strengthen HNC in urban settings. However, much of this research has operationalised HNC in narrow psychological terms. Based on an embodied framework of urban human–food connection (HFC) as a specific dimension of HNC, this article explores the role of active urban gardening in promoting different types of internal and external HFC and their link with pro-environmental food behaviour (PEFB). Based on a quantitative survey in Germany addressing vegetable gardeners in Munich (N = 254), a principal component analysis extracted four components of HFC comprising external body-related HFC (i.e. immediate urban garden-body activities: food harvesting and experiential food interaction) and internal mind-related HFC (i.e. immediate urban garden-mind activities including food discovery as well as food consciousness). These were found to be statistically related to one another. Furthermore, regression analysis revealed that food consciousness through concerns on food consumption and environmental impacts as well as food as part of life attitude as an internal HFC is the sole predictor of PEFB. The study suggests an embodied HFC model emphasizing the need for local body- and mind-based nature connections for fostering earth stewardship. Future research should explore the relationship between inner dimensions of nature connectedness and external behavioural change to enable transformations towards sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the objective of increasing information inorganic pollutants in urban soils in Spain, we studied the presence of Cu, Pb, Zn, Ni, Cr, and As in 55 soils in the city of Santiago de Compostela (northwestern Spain). The soils were developed over diverse parent materials (granites, gneiss, schists, and amphibolites) and present different land uses, urban grasslands, urban forests, urban allotment gardens, and peri-urban agricultural soils. Total trace element concentrations, analyzed by XRF of ground samples, were correlated to physicochemical properties of the soils, and the influence of land use, lithology, and location on the degree of pollution was explored. In most soils, trace element concentrations followed the sequence Zn (55–484 mg kg−1) > Pb (20–566 mg kg−1) > Cr (17–277 mg kg−1) > Cu (17–188 mg kg−1) > As (13–205 mg kg−1) > Ni (11–91 mg kg−1). The concentrations were overall higher than regional backgrounds, but not high enough to class the soils as contaminated according to the Spanish regulation. Accordingly, the geoaccumulation index values indicate that most soils present low to moderate pollution levels. Among the elements studied, Cu, Pb, and Zn were correlated between them, with their highest concentrations happening in soils of the green areas in the city center; Cr and Ni concentrations were related to lithology of the parent material, with the highest concentrations in soils developed over amphibolite; finally, As concentrations are higher in two precise points without a clear connection to a known source of pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of productive gardens on public building roofs is an active way to use urban idle space. It has ecological, economic, and social values and helps alleviate many urban problems caused by the rapid advancement of land urbanization. This paper takes the productive rooftop garden of an urban commercial complex as an example, and assesses its development status based on methods including ArcGIS, field research, and questionnaire interviews, combined with the overall aspects of the country and key case analysis. The results indicate several key aspects of the current status of such gardens in China. (1) As affected by natural and social factors, the current spatial distribution of productive rooftop gardens of commercial complexes in Chinese mainland is uneven, with 84.21% located in the southeast coast and the Sichuan region. (2) The operation and development of this type of productive landscape is in good shape. The number of rooftop gardens has continued to increase since 2013, and the scale is generally greater. Currently, the business model which combines nature education and parent-child amusement experience activities is the most stable. (3) Cases in good operating condition tend to have relatively related characteristics in layouts, traffic functions, landscape elements, and space design. (4) Questionnaire interviews show that citizens are highly willing to participate in rooftop productive landscapes, while operators still experience challenges in policies, funds, and planting knowledge in practice. This paper analyses the existing problems in the development status and strategy of the rooftop productive landscape. It proposes complementary optimization strategies to serve as a reference for the rooftop design of commercial complexes and the utilization of a significant amount of idle space on the roofs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The garden alley is popular, poetic, and full of natural and literary feelings that has a prominent place in poetry and literature. Alleyways in traditional architecture and urban gardens are also considered authentic patterns, beautiful, artistic, poetic, and relaxing spaces. The pattern in the present era has been replaced by non-western and western-style urban architecture and decay. In traditional Iranian cities, most residential contexts had gardens that transformed residential textures into neighborhood gardens or a combination of buildings and green areas. Methodology: The purpose of the present study was to investigate the garden alley as a model of urban design in Iranian cities. In this regard, the most important question of this article is: What is the position of garden alleys in the design of local and urban contexts in Iran? The research method used in this research is historical-analytical with a logical reasoning approach based on documentary study methods. Library and case studies have also been carried out. Discussion: Evaluation criteria can be considered in the mentioned design with slight changes. These changes are limited to adding a literary component and separating function into two components: land use and activity, and access and movement. Therefore, the dimensions of the present research are historical, literary, spatial-physical, semantic, environmental, objective, mental, access, movement, use, activity, cultural, social, and spiritual-psychological perspectives. The resulting conceptual framework can be used to evaluate case studies from the perspective of users and clients. According to the results of the analysis of questionnaires and research surveys, the Sardrood Garden Alley had a high average score in terms of environmental quality. The average score of the respondents on the human and environmental qualities of the garden alleys was between 90% and 100%. This evaluation indicated the high human and environmental qualities in the garden alley pattern and showed the satisfaction of users in various human and environmental dimensions. Conclusion: The results of the present study indicated that garden alleys in the traditional Iranian architecture and urban design have been integral parts of the urban texture which are still considered as a part of many rural and urban contexts. The artificial texture of the villages and towns has been gradually established through garden alleys to the texture of the gardens and fields. With a humane, literary, and nature-based approach to the spaces of villages, towns, and cities, we can help to institutionalize the pattern of garden alleys through planning and designing strategies. These include: preserving the natural heritage of the gardens and the alleyways of the garden, observing privacy and ownership, streamlining the gardens with a catering garden pattern, urban design of the alleyways, creativity in the design of the garden alley, and anticipating the garden alley in urban recreation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assessed the adaptive potential of two rare decorative species listed in the Red Book of Kazakhstan: Tulipa tarda Stapf (Liliaceae) and Gymnospermium altaicum (Pall.) Spach (Berberidaceae) by studying the morphological variability of generative individuals of the species. Our studies were carried out in natural populations in the Northern Tien Shan and introduced populations of the botanical garden and urban green areas of Almaty. These species showed a high degree of adaptation under the conditions of the introduction. Moreover, Gymnospermium altaicum, accidentally introduced into the urban green area of Bukhar Zhyrau Boulevard (Almaty), had formed a naturalized population that persisted for more than 8 years. The naturalized population of Tulipa tarda in the botanical garden (Almaty), introduced more than 20 years ago by one of the authors of this article, has been in existence even longer. In the latter case, individuals of seed origin showed higher adaptive capabilities than those transferred by the bulbs of generative plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

【Objective】 In order to solve the contradiction of water consume between urban gardens and social life, the establishment of water-saving lawns has become the main direction of urban green space development.【Method】‘Houndog Ⅴ’ and‘Jaguar IVG’ were used as experimental materials in the present study, and they were cultured under four different water supply conditions: 15 %-20 %, 20 %-25 %, 25 %-30 %, and 30 %-40 %. The contents of proline(Pro), malondialdehyde(MDA), chlorophyll(Chl) and(P_n) Net Photosynthetic rate,(T_r) Transpiration, and(G_s)Stomatal Conductance have been measured.【Result】The growth of water conditions on the ‘Houndog Ⅴ’ of the lower limit was 25 %-30 %(moderate irrigation), and the ‘Jaguar IVG’ growth of water conditions limit was 20 %-25 %(mild irrigation).【Conclusion】With better lawn water-saving potential, the demand of Festuca arundinacea Schreb ‘Jaguar IVG’ for water was lower than that of the Festuca arundinacea Schreb P ‘Houndog Ⅴ’. Under the 20 %-25 %(mild irrigation) water conditions, the ‘Houndog Ⅴ’ meets the needs of lower quality lawn green landscape. The Festuca arundinacea Schreb ‘Jaguar IVG’ landscape effects and the ability to maintain the green period are more stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Although urban gardens are often celebrated for supporting bee abundance and diversity within cities, little is known about how garden management and urbanization levels influence bee foraging behavior and ability to utilize resources within these landscapes. Specifically, the preferences and diet breadth of bees may depend critically on local and landscape conditions in human-managed, urban environments. To understand how foraging patterns and pollen preferences are influenced by urban landscape composition, we first examined if bees visit plants grown within urban gardens and second assessed the relationships between local floral resources, urban land cover, and pollen collection patterns, focusing on 20 community gardens across 125 km of the California central coast. We targeted a well-studied, essential native pollinator in this ecoregion, Bombus vosnesenskii, and analyzed pollen on the bodies of individuals collected in our study gardens to compare their contents to local and landscape garden composition factors. We found that greater landscape-level urban cover and greater plant species richness in the garden both drove higher within-garden pollen collection. We also found that B. vosnesenskii preferred ornamental plant species over highly available crop species in the gardens. Our study indicates that landscapes that support plant diversity, including both ornamental plants and sustenance-oriented food crops, promote greater within-garden pollen collection patterns, with likely benefits for urban garden food production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the contribution of urban community gardens to food availability in Emfuleni Local Municipality, Gauteng Province of South Africa. The objectives were to determine the ability of the urban community gardens to produce vegetables throughout the year and to assess the contribution of these gardens to food availability. It was conducted in six (6) townships of Emfuleni Local Municipality by means of semi-structured survey questionnaires. A sample of 254 participants was randomly drawn from 418 urban farmers. A descriptive analysis technique and one-way ANOVA formed part of the data analysis using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23. The study found that community gardens contributed to food availability of the respondents by providing fresh vegetables to most urban farmers and their household members throughout the year. Furthermore, it was discovered that there is no relationship between vegetable availability and gender of the respondents. Based on the results, the study recommended that farmers in urban community gardens should focus on increasing and sustaining their production to ensure that they have adequate vegetables to feed their families throughout the year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent centuries, with the transition from private gardens to urban parks in Iran, the concern of social insecurity in urban parks has gradually become one of the main debates among city officials and social studies researchers. This study attempts to investigate "The Role of Vegetation on Social Abnormalities". It aims ultimately to increase the sense of security by reducing the negative aspects of vegetation in urban parks. This research focuses on creating sensible experience for urban park's consumers. To this purpose, first theoretical studies is reviewed, then field studies and recognizing the current situation of vegetation in Shush Park in Tehran and finding its relationship with the level of social anomalies and the feeling of security, after that making a change in the vegetation and uses in this park by benefiting from the research achievements in the previous two stages, and finally measuring the success rate of the research project by qualitative research method is maintained. Basically, the type of plant cover is as an independent variable and user behavior as a dependent variable. As a result, it is vital to boost the feeling of security in Shush Park, and also to change the park's vegetation. Therefore, to better understand this study the graphic plan cards are included at the end. Each graphic plan card shows the location of social anomalies in Shush Park before and after vegetation changes in the spring of 2006 and 2008. This comparison clarifies that the vegetation of Shush Park reduces the occurrence of social anomalies and increases the sense of security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the adoption by the Czech Parliament in January 2021 of a law that will regulate gardening activities in the Czech Republic. Also cited are a comparison of the proposed law to the laws already in place in Germany and Slovakia, and how the law will contribute to the effective use and preservation of soil in urban spaces.

A city's planted trees, the great majority of which are in private gardens, play a fundamental role in shaping a city's wild ecology, ecosystem functioning, and ecosystem services. However, studying tree diversity across a city's many thousands of separate private gardens is logistically challenging. After the disastrous 2010-2011 earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, over 7,000 homes were abandoned and a botanical survey of these gardens was contracted by the Government's Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) prior to buildings being demolished. This unprecedented access to private gardens across the 443.9 hectares 'Residential Red Zone' area of eastern Christchurch is a unique opportunity to explore the composition of trees in private gardens across a large area of a New Zealand city. We analysed these survey data to describe the effects of housing age, socio-economics, human population density, and general soil quality, on tree abundance, species richness, and the proportion of indigenous and exotic species. We found that while most of the tree species were exotic, about half of the individual trees were local native species. There is an increasing realisation of the native tree species values among Christchurch citizens and gardens in more recent areas of housing had a higher proportion of smaller/younger native trees. However, the same sites had proportionately more exotic trees, by species and individuals, amongst their larger planted trees than older areas of housing. The majority of the species, and individuals, of the larger (=10 cm DBH) trees planted in gardens still tend to be exotic species. In newer suburbs, gardens in wealthy areas had more native trees than gardens from poorer areas, while in older suburbs, poorer areas had more native big trees than wealthy areas. In combination, these describe, in detail unparalleled for at least in New Zealand, how the tree infrastructure of the city varies in space and time. This lays the groundwork for better understanding of how wildlife distribution and abundance, wild plant regeneration, and ecosystem services, are affected by the city's trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential gardens in urban areas offer substantial opportunities for biodiversity conservation. To realize this opportunity, a comprehensive understanding of which species prosper in gardens, which mechanisms promote their use of these green spaces and how these mechanisms can be manipulated by residents to achieve conservation outcomes, is needed. While substantial progress has been made in evaluating the mechanisms that influence the diversity, presence, and abundance of wildlife in gardens, how these mechanisms vary seasonally is largely unknown. This study investigated whether the garden features influencing the presence and/or abundance of arboreal, flying, and ground‐dwelling mammals in gardens varied seasonally using acoustic, trapping, and spotlighting surveys undertaken in four consecutive seasons (2018/19) in 52 gardens in southwestern Australia. As animal behavior and resource availability varies seasonally, we predicted that garden features influencing the presence and abundance of mammals in gardens would also vary seasonally. For arboreal and ground‐dwelling mammals, we found that some garden features (e.g., canopy cover and presence of dogs, respectively) were important in more than one season; however, none were important in all seasons with most only being influential in one. No garden features predicted the presence of flying mammals in more than one season. Our results suggest that sampling in a single or few seasons may fail to identify features influencing wildlife at times other than in the season of sampling, or alternatively, may overemphasize factors that do not operate across all seasons. Studies that consider the mechanisms on a seasonal basis will provide a more comprehensive list of features influencing the presence and abundance of animals in gardens. We suggest it is both those features that support wildlife in multiple or all seasons, and those that support critical life‐history events in a single season that could contribute to conservation if manipulated by residents appropriately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The northernmost population of Acer campestre L. has its distribution in southern Sweden and consists of just 36 individuals. This particular remnant is considered critically endangered (CE) although the species spreads rapidly as potentially invasive gene pools escaped from gardens and urban plantations. The issue to distinguish between indigenous and introduced gene pools is urgent, since individuals or stands worthy of preservation risk being cut down. This article explores the possibility to use geometric morphometrics by landmarks to characterize shapes of leaves and samaras and to distinguish different gene pools. Bayesian clustering based on microsatellite data clearly distinguished between putatively native and introduced gene pools in southern Sweden. A discriminant analysis of Procrustes coordinates of leaf shapes gave 77% correct classification revealing a strongly concave leaf base for the native gene pool and a convex leaf base for the introduced ones. Corresponding analyses of the samara data resulted in 82% correct classification. In general, the discrimination rate for samara shape was higher than for leaf shape, suggesting a stronger influence of differences between individual and populations. However, PCA clearly showed that the variation in the native gene pool represents a subset of the variation seen in the introduced gene pool, both for leaf and samara shape. An easy to apply method to distinguish between native and introduced gene pools are thus not to be expected from shape data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drone imaging has been shown to have increasing value in monitoring and analysing different kinds of processes related to agriculture and forestry. In long-term monitoring and observation tasks, huge amounts of image data are produced and stored. Environmental drone image datasets may have value beyond the studies that produced the data. A collection of image datasets from multiple data producers can, for example, provide more diverse training input for a machine learning model for vegetation classification, compared with a single dataset limited in time and location. To ensure reproducible research, research data such as image datasets should be published in usable and undegraded form, with sufficient metadata. Timely storage in a stable research data repository is recommended, to avoid loss of data. This work presents research datasets of 2020 drone images acquired from agricultural and forestry research sites of Häme University of Applied Sciences, and from Hämeenlinna urban areas. Those images that do not contain personal data are made freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution license. For images containing personal data, such as images of private homes, privacypreserving forms of data sharingmay be possible in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the middle of the 19th century, when the term ‘landscape architecture’ began to replace the hitherto common term ‘garden art’, the garden as a work of art and gardening, understood as a predominantly decorative activity, stood in the critical discussion about the future of the metropolises. It was not only architects and urban planners who repeatedly questioned the value of ornamental gardens in the city. Against the background of the enormous growth of the cities in the industrial age and the accompanying social problems, leading European landscape architects in the 20th century like Leberecht Migge (1881-1935), Ernst Cramer (1898-1980), and Dieter Kienast (1945-1998) stated that gardening is neither artistic work nor scientific planning, neither modern nor progressive. Given the respective historical context as well as the particular conception of city and society, this criticism is comprehensible. In the 21st century though, the garden as a living component in the ‘network metropolis’, and gardening itself, especially ‘urban gardening’, were experiencing a remarkable renaissance. Against the background of today’s rapid development of the ‘Zwischenstadt’, it turns out that the basic principles of garden thinking never really lost their relevance.

Umkämpftes Grün. Zwischen neoliberaler Stadtentwicklung und Stadtgestaltung von unten von Sarah Kumnig, Marit Rosol und Andrea*s Exner eröffnet einen alternativen Blickwinkel auf die kritische Praxis des städtischen Gärtnerns. Die Gegenüberstellung verschiedener Maßstabsebenen, Fallbeispielen und Betrachtungsweisen, die von historischer Analyse bis zu Aktivismus vor Ort reichen, verdeutlichen die Ambivalenz des Phänomens ‚Urban Gardening‘ und legt Mechanismen und Effekte offen, die diese kritische Praxis der Raumaneignung in ihr Gegenteil verkehren können. Vor allem die Entkoppelung von Sozial- und Künstlerkritik führt zu einer programmatischen Schwächung der Initiativen und zu deren Vereinnahmung durch neoliberale Stadtpolitiken.

Groups of urban gardeners collectively grow vegetables, fruits and flowers in an increasing number of community gardens all over the world. Despite a growing body of literature on community gardens, there is a particular gap for a transcontinental bigger N-study on the organisation of community gardening, which we want to fill with a comparative document analysis of 51 urban community gardens in six anglophone and German-speaking countries. Specifically, we want to understand how community gardens are organised as spaces for long-term collective action. We systematically collected and analysed documents such as membership rules, handouts to new members, formal statutes, or blog entries. A cluster analysis helped to identify three types of community garden organisations, which vary in terms of organisational form, membership and exclusion rules, individual versus collective cultivation of the garden area, and the degree of regulation, fees, and waiting lists. Our findings show that there is no single blueprint for a long-term community garden organisation, but that self-organisation or nested forms of organisation and more or less open social boundaries result in distinct places of collective gardening. Comparing organisational types across geographical contexts, the European gardens analysed showed bigger organisational diversity, more open social boundaries and more collectively used areas compared to North American gardens.

The nature and impacts of living in urban settings are gaining their saliences in developed and developing countries alike, particularly during the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the crisis, the wellbeing of urban society became intertwined with a so-called “new lifestyle”, which involved quarantine and working in a home environment. Facing such challenges, urban gardening is deemed as an alternative intervention to enhance residents’ wellbeing and the environmental sustainability of urban areas, including Indonesian cities. A preliminary study was conducted to monitor the wellbeing of urban gardening practitioners, as well as investigate the motivation and any association between gardening and wellbeing with the COVID-19 pandemic situation by analysing data from Indonesian metropolitan areas. The study utilized instruments of “satisfaction with life scale (SWLS)” and “scale of positive and negative experience (SPANE)” to investigate the subjective wellbeing of 67 respondents. Amongst others, we identified that urban gardening practitioners tend to be in positive moods and have better overall wellbeing; 52.24% of the respondents were highly satisfied with their life. Furthermore, we observed a variety of motivations to start gardening, with hobby and utilization of free space as prominent reasons, followed by other motivations such as environmental benefit and aesthetic. Integrating the environmental benefits of urban gardening and the implications for an individual’s wellbeing can be reflected for sustainable urban development and policies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Nearctic leafhopper species Gyponana (Gyponana) mali DeLong, 1942 is reported from Europe for the first time and represents the first record of the tribe Gyponini Stål, 1870 (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae: Iassinae: Gyponini) for the Palearctic Region. Specimens were collected in southern Switzerland (Ticino) and two regions of northern Italy (Lombardy and Veneto) in 2015-2019. The preferred host plant in these areas appears to be Cornus sanguinea L. Phylogenetic analysis of the COI barcode sequences grouped one of the European specimens with three individuals of G. (G.) mali from Ontario, Canada. Morphological study indicated that the male genitalia of the European population are intermediate between G. (G.) mali and G. (G.) extenda DeLong, 1942. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]