The ‘GartenApp’: Assessing and Communicating the Ecological Potential of Private Gardens

Abstract

Private gardens make up large parts of urban green space. In contrast to public green spaces, planning and management is usually uncoordinated and independent of municipal planning and management strategies. Therefore, the potential for private gardens to provide ecosystem services and habitat and to function as corridors for wildlife is not fully utilized. In order to improve public knowledge on gardens, as well as provide individual gardeners with information on what they can contribute to enhance ecosystem services provision, we developed a GIS-based web application for the city of Braunschweig (Germany): the ‘GartenApp’ (garden app). Users of the app have to outline their garden on a web map and provide information on biodiversity related features and management practices. Finally, they are asked about observations of well recognizable species in their gardens. As an output, the gardeners are provided with an estimate of the ecosystem services their garden provides, with an evaluation of the biodiversity friendliness, customized advice on improving ecosystem services provision, and results from connectivity models that show gardeners the role of their garden in the green network of the city. In this paper, we describe the app architecture and show the first results from its application. We finish with a discussion on the potential of GIS-based web applications for urban sustainability, planning and conservation.

Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Urban Development

“…This Special Issue covers a broad geographical range, with contributions from Africa [17], Asia [18][19][20], Australia [21,22], Europe [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] and North America [31][32][33]. It explores a range of ecosystems in the urban realm, spans natural remnants such as forests [30,32], wetlands [18,21], and natural grasslands [17,22], traditional urban greenspaces including cemeteries [33], gardens [29,31], and, finally, novel urban ecosystems such as green roofs and constructed wetlands [20,26], built-up areas [23], railway bridges [24] and emerging forests on vacant land [27]. In combination, a wide range of socio-cultural and environmental settings are explored and discussed.…”

“…Several papers explore biodiversity in relation to diverse features of urban environments and address a range of animal groups [21,24,27,31,33] and plants [17,18,20,22,27,30,32], including some multi-taxa studies [24,26,27]. Other papers explicitly address urban environments as socio-ecological systems [19,22,25], or further methodological approaches in understanding the people-nature intersection in cities [23,28,29]. Our selection of papers address four current topics in urban ecological research: pressures on biodiversity in cities, opportunities for biodiversity in cities, biodiversity as a component of socio-ecological systems, and new methodological approaches to urban biodiversity conservation and sustainable urban development ( Figure 1).…”

“…Among other factors, increasing floral richness in both settings supported wild bee species richness. Schneider et al [29] illustrate how a web application based on GIS (Geographic Information System) could support the biodiversity-sensitive management of gardens through an information exchange with gardeners.…”

Relationship between Rural Settlements’ Plant Communities and Environmental Factors in Hilly Area of Southeast China

“…Based on morphology, Liu Peilin introduced the types, configuration forms, and distribution characteristics of residential buildings in detail [37]. Regarding architectural garden plant landscape, ethnobotany research especially focuses on the plant varieties demanded by residents, that affect the distribution pattern of the rural plant community [7,38]. In addition, garden plant varieties are closely related to the form of courtyard enclosure, architectural style, and architectural type manifested by human activities in settlements.…”

Towards sustainable performance of urban horticulture: ten challenging fields of action for modern integrated pest management in cities

“…IoT-based mobile apps are developed for this purpose as decision support systems (Penzenstadler et al 2018 ). The “Garden App” shows gardeners the role of their garden in the green network of the city (Schneider et al 2020 ). With further apps like the “Bee App”, the user receives advice how to turn his garden with trees, bushes or annuals more bee-friendly (Federal Ministry for Food and Agriculture Germany 2020 ).…”