Author:

Keywords:

garden complex, environment, garden management

Abstract:

Despite the image of buildings and petrified areas, a considerable part of urban and rural residential areas consists out of domestic gardens (Gaston et al., 2005), the nearest nature for many urban, semi-urban as well as rural dwellers. But how natural are these gardens? A large diversity by fragmentation in area as well as in property results in a large diversity in garden management. This management, in many cases under control of the garden owner, generates an intricate garden system with materials being brought in (inputs, like fertilizers and pesticides), materials being processed (stock, like green garden waste that is being composted) and materials being exported (outputs, like grass clippings). To what level are our gardens managed, what is the environmental impact and is it possible to monitor this? Gardens tend to be missing in land use, environmental as well as socio-economical statistics (Zmyslony and Gagnon, 1998). The research proposed here therefore collects new data on gardens. A garden is defined here as the part of the residential parcel without the associated house. Pasture for hobby farming, extensive woodlots and storage space for building materials or refuse are excluded from this definition. For Flanders, the northern part of Belgium, a regional-wide internet-survey has been conducted on garden components and management, including an inventory and quantification of inputs and outputs from the garden. Also data on socio-economical characteristics of the garden owner were collected. A number of 1.138 respondents was considered for analysis, corresponding to 0,13% of the garden area in Flanders as determined by Dewaelheyns et al. (2008). For the quantification of inputs and outputs by means of an internet-survey, convenient metrics needed to be developed. A selection of survey results will be presented, including fertilizers, home compost and grass clippings. They support the idea that gardens in Flanders are a very dynamic type of land use, generating a number of material flows to and from the wider environment. Follow-up research will search for links between easily measurable characteristics of the garden (e.g. the percentage lawn within the garden area) or socio-economical characteristics of the garden owner (e.g. occupation and garden perception) with management characteristics (such as the use of fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides). It will be explored how useful existing links can be for a systematic environmental monitoring of gardens.