Efforts to achieve urban sustainability include ecological practices within civic society. A prominent example of this is the voluntary stewardship of green urban spaces such as community gardening. People participating in these practices – so the argument goes – draw on social-ecological memory (SE-memory) – knowledge, experience, and practice of local ecosystem management. The present study scrutinises the components and implications of the concept of SE-memory. It identifies and fills a theoretical gap by investigating and adding neglected dimensions of individual memory while strengthening the concept’s social component by examining implications of SE-memory for its actual individual carriers. The study centres on Berlin’s intercultural gardens – urban community gardens where processes of SE-memory are particularly diverse. It is based on five months of fieldwork, including intensive participant observations and in-depth interviews in such gardens. The findings show that the reviving, modifying, and transmitting of SE-memory involve expressions of individuality as well as community and comprise inter-locking streams of both individual and social memory. These play a pivotal role for individuals’ sense of belonging, social inclusion, and commitment to cultural diversity central to the intercultural gardens’ contribution to social urban sustainability as they provide space for personal memory revival, allow for people to practice their culture of origin, and offer points of manifold exchange with others.

The pressure on natural resources in urban areas increases as cities grow in size and populations; however, informal institutions as norms and values by ‘common people’ can play a major role for protection of urban greens.  As the city of Bangalore, India, rapidly grows in size and population, its green areas are disappearing. In rural parts of India, local people’s notion of certain ecosystems as sacred has rendered the ecosystems protection and contributed to sustenance of ecosystem services’ generation. The aim of this paper is to explore the potential of stewardship of urban greens in a changing social context, focusing on religious beliefs and practices surrounding trees in Bangalore. It focuses on the cultural dimension of ecosystem services and connects previous research on sacred groves in rural areas with research on stewardship of urban greens. Methods include interview surveys with visitors to five focus sites of religious significance representing the city's four major religions; semi-structured interviews with key informants; and observations. Results show that on the Hindu sites -the study’s main focus- in the city, a range of trees were sacred themselves and revered through a set of practices. On the other sites, trees were rather an incorporated part of the land areas with religious significance. On all sites a set of cultural services was appreciated as generated by trees. Furthermore, visitors had a strong stake in the trees but the experienced levels of capacity to secure the trees’ protection differed between the sites. The study concludes that ‘common people’ are crucial stakeholders for ecosystem stewardship that ensures protection of the urban greens in Bangalore. The different religions in the city provide a multi-faceted protection of different types of urban greens. The level of protection is the outcome of a complex web of community values and norms, where sacredness is one included element.