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theconversation.com
'Small, flowering islands': German city reveals how nature thrives when neighbours care for street tree beds
When Olivia Besters began caring for the patch of soil beneath the chestnut tree outside her home in Freiburg, Germany, more than 35 years ago, biodiversity was not on her mind. “It was the optics,” she told me. The ground was compacted and littered with trash and dog “legacies”. Besters simply wanted the space directly outside her front door to look nicer. “Everything else came much later,” she said. “Thirty-five years ago, no one talked about climate change or insect decline.” Over time, one tree bed expanded into 36 across Besters’ neighbourhood of Herdern. So deep is her commitment to her tree beds that her children gifted her a bike trailer to cart around her watering system, her phone is filled with stunning pictures of the flowers growing in her tree beds, and she has been nominated for city-wide engagement awards. As towns and cities grow, biodiversity is being squeezed into ever smaller spaces while people experience a progressive loss of everyday contact with nature. Street tree beds – and the practice of caring for them – offer cities a way to counter urban biodiversity loss while enriching people’s connection with nature in their neighbourhoods. Our research shows that citizen...
