ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Urban Agriculture
Urban gardener preferences and values can affect the aesthetics, management, and vegetation complexity of community gardens
Provisionally accepted
- 1Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Canberra, Australia
- 2CSIRO Ecosciences Precinct, Dutton Park, Australia
- 3University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, United States
- 4Lewis & Clark College, Portland, United States
- 5The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States
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Urban community gardens support a great amount of biodiversity, which deliver valuable ecosystem services to the garden and the urban environment. Although research indicates that distinct management practices can support different levels of biodiversity and ecosystem services, management of garden habitat, plant selection, and overall aesthetics are largely based on gardener preferences. In this study, we conducted an online survey across 21 community gardens in Central California to better understand gardener aesthetic and management processes. We presented two selections of images representing common garden management styles to this region and ask respondents to select their preferred garden image and explain why they preferred that image in an open-ended response. We also collected sociodemographic and education background to assess if certain aesthetic and management preferences were associated with specific gardener characteristics. In the first selection of images, gardeners strongly preferred an image they described as tidy and organised (85% of respondents) stating it looked cleaner and was more cared for. They also stated that managed pathways allowed for easier movement around the garden, better access to plots, and prevented the spread of weeds. Participation in the Master Gardener program (a sustainable gardening program provided by the University of California) was correlated with this image preference. In the second selection of images, gardeners did not strongly prefer either image, and 20% of gardeners declined to indicate a preference because they found aspects of both images to be desirable, namely that they appreciated the presence of crop plants for food production, but they also wanted flowering plants that support pollination services. Such results highlight that gardeners recognise the complexity of ecological processes within the urban garden but prefer a tidy and organised garden aesthetic for multiple reasons.
Keywords: ecological management, biodiversity ecosystem services, HUMAN BEHAVIOUR, motivations, local management, Integrated Pest Management
Received: 26 Sep 2025; Accepted: 12 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lin, Bichier, Liere, Jha, Gonzalez and Philpott. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Heidi Liere, heidil@lclark.edu
Stacy Michelle Philpott, sphilpot@ucsc.edu
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.