This study aims to relate bacterial dynamics to gaseous emissions during the composting of kitchen and garden wastes. High-throughput sequencing and Functional Annotation of Prokaryotic Taxa ...(FAPROTAX) were used to analyse the bacterial community and potential functions during composting, respectively. Results show that the addition of garden waste up to 15% of the total wet weight of composting materials notably mitigated gaseous emissions and improved maturity during kitchen waste composting. Ammonium nitrogen, temperature, oxygen content, and electrical conductivity were identified as critical factors to impact gaseous emissions. The bacterial community analysis indicated that the proliferation of anaerobes during the storage of kitchen waste induced the dramatic emission of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) at the beginning of composting. Adding garden waste could effectively amend the physiochemical properties of composting materials to reduce the relative abundance of microbes (e.g. Desulfotomaculum and Caldicoprobacter) that contributed to gaseous emissions, but enrich those (e.g. Bacillus and Pseudoxanthomonas) for organic biodegradation. Further analysis by FAPROTAX corroborated that adding garden waste could effectively inhibit relevant microbial metabolisms (e.g. fermentation, nitrite/nitrate respiration and sulphate respiration) and thus alleviate the emission of greenhouse gases and odours during kitchen waste composting.
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•Garden waste addition at 15% (wet weight) notably improved kitchen waste composting.•NH4+, temperature, oxygen content and EC significantly impact gaseous emissions.•Anaerobes in raw kitchen waste contributed significantly to CH4 and N2O emissions.•Co-composting garden and kitchen wastes reduced bacteria with gaseous emissions.•FAPROTAX analysed microbial functions to decipher the reduced gaseous emissions.
Domestic gardens typically consist of a mixture of native and non‐native plants which support biodiversity and provide valuable ecosystem services, particularly in urban environments. Many gardeners ...wish to encourage biodiversity by choosing appropriate plant taxa. The value of native and non‐native plants in supporting animal biodiversity is, however, largely unknown. The relative value of native and non‐native garden plants to invertebrates was investigated in a replicated field experiment. Plots (deliberately akin to garden borders) were planted with one of three treatments, representing assemblages of plants based on origin (native, near‐native and exotic). Invertebrates and resource measurements were recorded over four years. This paper reports the abundance of flower‐visiting aerial insects (‘pollinators’) associated with the three plant assemblages. For all pollinator groups on all treatments, greater floral resource resulted in an increase in visits. There was, however, a greater abundance of total pollinators recorded on native and near‐native treatments compared with the exotic plots. Short‐tongued bumblebees followed the same pattern whilst more hoverflies were recorded on the native treatment than the other treatments, and more honeybees on the near‐native treatment. There was no difference between treatments in abundance of long‐tongued bumblebees or solitary bees. The lack of difference in solitary bee abundance between treatments was probably due to a third of individuals from this group being recorded on one exotic plant species. The number of flower visitors corresponded to the peak flowering period of the treatments, that is there were fewer flower visitors to the exotic treatment compared with the other treatments in early summer but relatively more later in the season. Synthesis and applications. This experiment has demonstrated that utilizing plants from only a single region of origin (i.e. nativeness) may not be an optimal strategy for resource provision for pollinating insects in gardens. Gardens can be enhanced as a habitat by planting a variety of flowering plants, biased towards native and near‐native species but with a selection of exotics to extend the flowering season and potentially provide resources for specialist groups.
Getting to know them Tommy Garnett; Jane Holth
Australian garden history,
04/2021, Letnik:
32, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Tommy Garnett, OAM, recalls in his interview with Jane Holth in 2002 his argument for dropping the word 'history' in the Society's name. Heresy! Perhaps, but what I, as the current editor of ...Australian Garden History, interpret him to mean is that gardens are evolutionary and therefore their heritage cannot be thought of in the same way as buildings. Moreover, the interview reveals his interest in the origins of plants and the importance of recognising not only grand gardens but tiny ones too, and the people who work in them: all lodes for this journal to mine.
Community gardens vary in several ways: they are cultivated by different kinds of communities in various locations, entail individual or communal plots and the extent of active participation (e.g. ...gardening) differs. In this paper, we study seven community gardens with varying organisational designs and objectives, and investigate the extent to which these influence the enhancement of social cohesion. We also take into account to what extent differences in motivation among community gardeners matter. Despite these differences in motivation, however, we find that in all of the cases studied, people talk to and get to know others, and mutual help is widespread. We, therefore, conclude that community gardens contribute to the development of social cohesion - even if people are not particularly driven by social motivations. Moreover, while participants who are motivated by the social aspects of gardening naturally show a higher level of appreciation for them, these social aspects also bring added value for those participants who are motivated primarily by growing vegetables.
In the literature, community gardens feature as contested spaces: They are radical spaces used by grassroots movements to claim the "right to the city," organized garden projects attached to ...neoliberal strategies, or physical breeding grounds for neoliberal citizen-subjectivity. Long established in many Western contexts, community gardens were not evident in China until a group of scholar-activists in Shanghai initiated the practice in 2016. Drawing on two flagship community garden cases in that city, we investigate the emergence and development of community gardens and discuss the ways in which they instantiate neither a radical nor a neoliberal political vision. Our observations show that a nonprofit organization-rather than the local citizenry or municipal government-proactively advanced the production of community gardens and the discursive construction of community participation over time. The rationale underlying this practice arises from organizers' framing of the community gardens as an "experiment of governance innovation" that dovetails with a broader reorientation of China's urban renewal agenda from demolition and reconstruction toward a people-centered incremental urban regeneration characterized by mass mobilization and social participation. We argue, therefore, that the community garden phenomenon reifies an alternative subjectivity-one that emphasizes the increasing visibility of social organizations as a state "flanking mechanism" to achieve extraeconomic objectives in urban governance. We also advance a pluralist understanding of China's urban governance beyond a growth-chasing logic to embrace the increasing complexity of the state ethos and societal instruments at play in and associated with this sphere.
Current environmental and health challenges require us to identify ways to better align aesthetics, ecology, and health. At the local level, community gardens are increasingly praised for their ...therapeutic qualities. They also provide a lens through which we can explore relational processes that connect people, ecology and health. Using key-informant interview data, this research explores gardeners’ tactile, emotional, and value-driven responses to the gardening experience and how these responses influence health at various ecological levels (n = 67 participants, 28 urban gardens). Our findings demonstrate that gardeners’ aesthetic experiences generate meaning that encourages further engagement with activities that may lead to positive health outcomes. Gardeners directly experience nearby nature by ‘getting their hands dirty’ and growing food. They enjoy the way vegetables taste and form emotional connections with the garden. The physical and social qualities of garden participation awaken the senses and stimulate a range of responses that influence interpersonal processes (learning, affirming, expressive experiences) and social relationships that are supportive of positive health-related behaviors and overall health. This research suggests that the relational nature of aesthetics, defined as the most fundamental connection between people and place, can help guide community designers and health planners when designing environment and policy approaches to improve health behaviors.
► Uses a multi-disciplinary theoretical approach focused on aesthetics, landscape and health in community gardens. ► Explores the learning, affirming and expressive aesthetic experiences of community gardeners in gardens. ► Shows that community gardens have therapeutic qualities that contribute to a more holistic sense of health and well-being.
In The Classical Gardens of Shanghai, Shelly Bryant looks at five of Shanghai’s remaining classical gardens through their origins, changing fortunes, restorations, and links to a wider Chinese ...aesthetic. Shanghai’s classical gardens are as much text as space; they exist in art, poetry, and literature as much as in stone, rock, and earth. But these gardens have not remained static entities. Rather, they have been remodelled constantly since their inception. This book reflects this process within the constancy of traditional Chinese horticulture and reveals Shanghai’s remaining classical gardens as places representing wealth and social status, social and dynastic shifts, through falling family fortunes and political revolutions to search for a recovery of China’s ancient culture in the modern day.
Contrasts of differences within plant species and ecotypes are often best examined in ecology, evolution and genetics through provenance and biogeographical comparisons. Climate adaptation studies in ...plants are no exception and benefit from experiments that use these sets of factors.
Reciprocal common gardens are a tool used to test for local adaptation in species to different contexts including climate.
A synthesis of common gardens and intraspecific tests for climate adaptation was used to compile over 200 studies that explored the relative efficacy of this tool and the ecology of change. Exclusion criteria were applied to review this literature and to compile specific tests that explicitly examined climate, plants and reciprocity in gardens for a total of 70 independent instances.
A meta‐analysis was used to test for consistency and significance of detecting ecotypes for the different categories of traits tested and by the transplanting of seeds or seedlings.
This meta‐analysis provides clear evidence for plant adaptation to climate change because all significant effect size estimates were positive, relatively large, and both seed and seedling transplants demonstrated consistent evidence for local adaptation. Emergence and germination responses from seed transplant experiments and relative growth and biomass differences from seedling transplants provided particularly strong support.
Synthesis. Reciprocal common gardens were a highly effective experimental design to test for ecotypic differentiation and for climate adaptation. Nonetheless, we propose that future studies clearly define whether ecotypes are being explicitly tested in common garden experiments to enable evidence syntheses and discovery, and we highlight the need for reciprocal climatic gardens to clearly test for continued capacity for local adaptation in response to divergent climate selection processes in many plant species.
Reciprocal common gardens were a highly effective experimental design to test for ecotypic differentiation and for climate adaptation. Nonetheless, we propose that future studies clearly define whether ecotypes are being explicitly tested in common garden experiments to enable evidence syntheses and discovery, and we highlight the need for reciprocal climatic gardens to clearly test for continued capacity for local adaptation in response to divergent climate selection processes in many plant species.
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