Domestic gardens as socio-ecosystems: from owners and their practices to biodiversity and its conservation

Context and challenges

Urbanisation is one of the main causes of biodiversity loss, on the one hand through the destruction and fragmentation of semi-natural habitats, and on the other through the pressures exerted on the remaining habitat fragments: the remaining urban green spaces. These spaces support urban biodiversity and provide ecosystem services that are essential to city dwellers (notably in terms of culture and health). In this context, it is essential to identify ways of managing urban green spaces that reconcile the preservation of biodiversity with the perceptions, needs and uses of city dwellers. It is also necessary to identify the respective contributions of the different types of green space to species conservation within the urban fabric.

Objectives and methods

This thesis project focuses on domestic gardens, a type of urban green space that is still little studied. Yet gardens have a strong potential for the conservation of biodiversity in the city, as refuges for wild species, but also as places of daily interaction between city dwellers and the living world. In addition, studying them offers an opportunity to identify conservation strategies that can be transposed to other urban green spaces. Through an interdisciplinary approach in ecology and environmental psychology, this project is organised around three objectives. The first is to understand how the management and configuration of gardens influence the taxonomic and functional diversity of plant communities as well as the nectar resources they provide to flower-visiting insects. The second is to identify the existing barriers and opportunities for the conservation of flora in gardens, in particular by determining how the practices or activities associated with gardens can enrich gardeners’ connection to nature and their biophilia. The third is to assess the contribution of private gardens within the urban fabric to the conservation of flora (at a local study scale) and of a group of pollinators — butterflies (at a broader spatial scale).