Botanic gardens, as outdoor education settings, combine educating about the interdependence of people and plants, and the importance of protecting their habitats so that people’s willingness to protect the environment is enhanced. This research has been conducted within a renewed interest in the educational significance of learning beyond the classroom in the UK, and considers that botanic gardens – school collaborations have the potential to overcome barriers to the provision of outdoor education. Additionally, such collaborations offer appropriate grounds to investigate the relationship of school-based and outdoor learning. This research looks for the factors that militate in favour of successful collaborations between botanic gardens and schools, and explores how such collaborations shape pupils’ environmental learning experiences in the school and in the gardens. My research entails an ethnographic multi case study of collaborations between Wakehurst Place and three local primary schools. I conducted my fieldwork during the school year 2006-2007, and my research techniques included participant observation, semi-structured interviews, informal talks, keeping fieldnotes, and collecting documents and artifacts. Data were analysed using thematic analysis techniques. My research shows that the history of collaboration between the gardens and local schools, the organisations’ interdependency, and the development of professional relationships between the individuals involved, are the overarching factors that contribute to the success of collaborations. In addition, acknowledging that experience can be conceptualised in different ways, this research has shown that successful botanic gardens – school collaborations can result in pupils’ linking their environmental learning experiences across settings. Arguing that pupils merge the learning they acquire from different sources into a whole unit, and taking into account that individual behaviours are influenced by a variety of factors, it is suggested teachers and educators need to focus on encouraging pupils’ critical thinking on environmental issues through environmental learning experiences in the gardens and at school.

Thesis (M. Arch and M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1978. / Bibliography: leaves 134-137. / by Julie A. Moir. / M.Arch and M.C.P.

Objective: Previous studies have explored impacts of school gardening on students and detailed broad components needed for successful gardens, but little is known about how gardens are maintained, connected academically, valued, and sustained over time. The purpose of this observational study is to explore how school gardens become institutionalized and create an implementation framework that can be used to establish gardens that are well integrated into curriculum and culture. Study Design, Setting, Participants, Intervention: A stratified, purposeful sample of school gardeners at 21 Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Bronx schools completed a survey, semi-structured interviews, and concept mapping exercises during the 2013-2014 school year. Additional data collected were student observations, garden images, and related documents. Outcome Measures and Analysis: The survey was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Interviews, photos, observations and documents were qualitatively analyzed through thematic coding, pattern matching, explanation building, and cross-case synthesis. Concept mapping exercises was analyzed quantitatively by entering participants’ sorted statements into a similarity matrix to conduct multi-dimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis and qualitatively by thematic coding. Results: Survey, interview and observation data explicated how school gardeners used implementation strategies to overcome barriers, create new learning opportunities for students, and facilitate permeation of gardening into the school culture. The quantitative concept mapping analysis resulted in four school garden domains (resources and support, physical garden, student experience, and school community) and 19 domain components. Qualitative analysis of sorted statements and interviews elucidated relationships between each domain’s components and also the domains to each other. An integration of all data produced a rich description, supplemented with images, of each school garden’s unique and varied characteristics, activities and operation. A synthesis of these analyses produced the School Garden Integration Framework (SGIF), which visually depicts how and when to implement each domain and all components to maximize garden integration. Additionally, a scaled tool (Scale) was created to capture and rate varying degrees of domain and component integration. Conclusion and Implications: The SGIF, Scale, and implementation strategies that emerged from this study can be used by schools or policymakers to strengthen existing or establish new well-integrated school gardening programs.

Open Gardens are those in private homes that have been opened as visitor attractions, where a proportion of money charged for entry is given to charity. Whilst there is a body of literature on garden visiting, there is little empirical research into garden opening. In addition, the existing studies, which were largely based on quantitative methods, do not differentiate between the roles and perspectives of the various agents who produce garden openings. This research investigates how Open Gardens, under the auspices of the charitable organisation Scotland’s Gardens, are collaboratively produced by garden openers, their helpers, volunteers and salaried staff of the organisation. The principal method of data collection was fieldwork that included participant observations from 39 site visits and 41 semi-structured interviews with the four kinds of producers. Supplementary data were generated from archival documents that record the historical development of Open Gardens. Data collected from fieldwork were analysed and categorised according to themes emerging by means of domain analysis. Each theme was carefully defined and described by creating thematic codes. After the preliminary data analysis, ongoing reading of various social theory literatures drew me towards using concepts of power to more deeply understand the nuanced ways in which the four kinds of producers work together. Hearn’s (2012) theoretical framework was employed to examine how power which differs in perception between the various agents in a given social situation operates in the production of Scottish Open Gardens. The data suggest that the meaning of legitimate power exercised by the producers of Scottish Open Gardens is often highly subjective. Some volunteers were reluctant to fully exercise their power to instruct garden openers because they assumed their request would not be accepted or that it would lead to unwanted conflict. Some garden openers concealed their intentions to show off their horticultural achievements through engagement with Scottish Open Gardens, because they perceived that others would regard pursuing such personal interests to be egocentric. The data also suggest that the production of Scottish Open Gardens is partly dependent on non-human forces such as nature or materials. The quality of gardens, the number of visitors and the amount raised for charity were determined by weather conditions, public transportation and even the refreshments on offer. The findings highlight the role of such non-human elements in the production of Scottish Open Gardens, and challenges the conventional premise that human-intentionality alone defines agency. The thesis concludes that the production of Scottish Open Gardens can be more deeply understood by considering the highly fluid, subjective and non-human ways in which power operates. There is no definitively powerful agent present, as the locus of power is continually contested between a rich and complex mixture of human and non-human agents. An implication for practice is that Scotland’s Gardens should clarify which agents may be more or less empowered in given aspects of Open Garden production, and the ways in which his or her power can and should be legitimised. The thesis also offers a broad theoretical framework which may help to more deeply understand the subtle power operations present in the co-production of outdoor leisure and tourism pursuits.

In urban areas, residential and community gardens are potential floral resources for pollinators. Pollinator "friendly" gardens are a popular way to support this ecosystem service, but the pollinator plant list recommendations lack empirical evidence to show which plants are most attractive to potential pollinators. This project used a community science survey based on a morpho-species protocol to monitor five community orchards in Portland, Oregon during six months of the growing season in 2017. Overall, orchards with higher floral species richness supported higher richness and abundance of pollinators, but the pollinator communities were not significantly different among the orchard sites. Orchard fruit-set had a variable correlation with pollinator richness and abundance. At the landscape level, the number of miles of street within 500m showed a strong negative correlation with the overall pollinator community richness. Bumble bee abundance showed a strong negative correlation with the percentage of single family residential zoning, and NDVI at 2000 meters. Our community science approach promoted volunteer awareness of pollinator diversity in Portland, but did not increase volunteer intention to conserve pollinators. This research helped build evidence of the dynamics of urban pollinators and the role that community science can play in pollinator biodiversity monitoring.

Museum techniques of presentation are reviewed for the possibility of use in contemporary botanic gardens. Supporting evidence suggests that these techniques are being successfully applied in some botanic gardens around the world. Institutions that have adopted museum techniques have been found to operate efficiently, whilst providing increased levels of enjoyment and education for visitors. Cultural differences between various countries have small influences on the most effective presentation techniques used, but further local research is required to uncover visitor preferences and use patterns in Australian botanic gardens. General principles of design that work well in the indoor environments of international musuems apply well in the outdoor environments of botanic gardens. Therefore greater use should be made of existing international museum research into visitor patterns of behaviour where it is locally appropriate.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 74-81)

The Two-eyed Seeing Garden is an ethnobotanical garden that is a living description of the interrelationships between land, plants and people that explicates two ways of seeing. The goal of the Two-eyed Seeing Garden is to combine two frameworks, one of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge and one of Western Scientific Knowledge, in an attempt to create a bridge between the two knowledges in order for the inter-relationships between the two systems to be made visible. The Two-eyed Seeing Garden emphasizes the worldview of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge as an independent valid knowledge system that describes local knowledge in connection with other local knowledges, nearby and far away. These knowings can be thought of as layers that begin to intersect and eventually connect the same way as ripples do in a pond. Small and central, yet moving out. The physical garden is this too. It is a small place that is nested within a larger region. Although it may have walls and be distinct from it’s immediate surroundings, it can connect to the larger region. The Two-eyed Seeing Garden is an example of wholeness and connectivity from its most minute aspects to its situatedness in the larger context. The relationships make the invisible visible and describe the co-creation and co-existence of all those that inhabit this land now and since time immemorial.

The Two-eyed Seeing Garden is an ethnobotanical garden that is a living description of the interrelationships between land, plants and people that explicates two ways of seeing. The goal of the Two-eyed Seeing Garden is to combine two frameworks, one of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge and one of Western Scientific Knowledge, in an attempt to create a bridge between the two knowledges in order for the inter-relationships between the two systems to be made visible. The Two-eyed Seeing Garden emphasizes the worldview of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge as an independent valid knowledge system that describes local knowledge in connection with other local knowledges, nearby and far away. These knowings can be thought of as layers that begin to intersect and eventually connect the same way as ripples do in a pond. Small and central, yet moving out. The physical garden is this too. It is a small place that is nested within a larger region. Although it may have walls and be distinct from it’s immediate surroundings, it can connect to the larger region. The Two-eyed Seeing Garden is an example of wholeness and connectivity from its most minute aspects to its situatedness in the larger context. The relationships make the invisible visible and describe the co-creation and co-existence of all those that inhabit this land now and since time immemorial.

Grön rehabilitering innebär att naturen används som ett läkande element tillsammans med den traditionella vita vården. Studien är baserad på intervjuer med både personal och deltagare inom tre utvalda verksamheter där grön rehabilitering bedrivs. Målgruppen är långtidssjukskrivna och fokus ligger på deras upplevelser av rehabiliteringen. Resultatet tyder på att naturen har en positiv inverkan på deltagarnas psykiska och fysiska läkeprocess; de får möjlighet att stanna upp och reflektera över sin situation. Resultatet har analyserats utifrån teorierna empowerment och känsla av sammanhang - KASAM. I rehabiliteringen finner deltagarna verktyg till att ta kontroll över sina liv samt att göra sina liv begripliga, hanterbara och meningsfulla.