Behind the Privet Hedge. Richard Sudell. The Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain

Increasing human land use for agriculture and housing leads to the loss of natural habitat and to widespread declines in wild bees. Bee foraging dynamics and fitness depend on the availability of resources in the surrounding landscape, but how precisely landscape related resource differences affect bee foraging patterns remains unclear. To investigate how landscape and its interaction with season and weather drive foraging and resource intake in social bees, we experimentally compared foraging activity, the allocation of foragers to different resources (pollen, nectar, and resin) and overall resource intake in the Australian stingless bee Tetragonula carbonaria (Apidae, Meliponini). Bee colonies were monitored in different seasons over twoyears. We compared foraging patterns and resource intake between the bees' natural habitat (forests) and two landscapes differently altered by humans (suburban gardens and agricultural macadamia plantations). We found foraging activity as well as pollen and nectar forager numbers to be highest in suburban gardens, intermediate in forests and low in plantations. Foraging patterns further differed between seasons, but seasonal variations strongly differed between landscapes. Sugar and pollen intake was low in plantations, but contrary with our predictions, it was even higher in gardens than in forests. In contrast, resin intake was similar across landscapes. Consequently, differences in resource availability between natural and altered landscapes strongly affect foraging patterns and thus resource intake in social bees. While agricultural monocultures largely reduce foraging success, suburban gardens can increase resource intake well above rates found in natural habitats of bees, indicating that human activities can both decrease and increase the availability of resources in a landscape and thus reduce or enhance bee fitness.

Systematic sampling of hoverflies, ichneumonid wasps, and butterflies, in a suburban garden at Leicester, England, has revealed a remarkable diversity of species. Suburban gardens, which support an enormous variety of plants, now cover at least a million acres (405,000 ha) of England and Wales (about 1/37 of the total land area), and if the diversity of insects found in one garden reflects the situation elsewhere, gardens are collectively the most important nature reserve in the country. They are, moreover, in no danger of disappearing; on the contrary they are spreading, yet their potential for conservation has been neglected.

The House Sparrow, Passer domesticus, is invasive in many areas of the world, but is listed as a species of conservation concern in parts of its native range. This study assessed the effect of land-use type on the relative abundance of House Sparrows in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, an urban area where they are invasive. It was predicted that House Sparrows in an urban environment would be more abundant at shopping malls compared with other habitats. Spot counts were done at shopping malls, schools, factories and suburban gardens throughout the year. House Sparrows were recorded frequently at shopping malls and rarely in suburban gardens. Type of urban land use appears to determine food and possibly nest site availability. This in turn affects the density, relative abundance, and distribution of House Sparrows. There appears no need to regulate this urban House Sparrow population because it has different feeding and breeding requirements to native birds, is not predatory, and is largely restricted to heavily transformed landscapes.

Species diversity of Ichneumonidae and Serphidae (Hymenoptera) in an English suburban garden

The political party in the modern world comes in many shapes and forms, but there are extraordinarily few political systems which lack parties entirely. One recent study suggests that, even in those cases when an attempt is made to outlaw them, they soon reappear ‘rather like bindweed in a suburban garden’.1 Some may argue that the pervasiveness of political parties merely reflects the fact that a term which originally had a rather narrow connotation has been extended to embrace political phenomena as diverse as the British Conservative Party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Irish Sinn Fein, the Colorado Party of Paraguay and the Democratic Party of the United States. It is true that what are now called parties include some that shade into what would better be called pressure groups at the one extreme and government bureaucracies at the other. Some perhaps better deserve the appellation ‘faction’, while yet others might more reasonably be seen as bands of terrorists or guerrilla fighters.

Gardens have been considered predominately in terms of a nature–culture binary, with nature positioned as a passive object of human control. Placing the human at the centre of the garden, these perspectives understand this space in terms of human cultures, needs and understandings. This paper critiques these perspectives, questioning whether gardens are ever simply human constructions. Actor–network theory (ANT) provides a framework for this research, which examines human–nature relations through a focus on the material processes of gardening. Drawing on interviews with suburban gardeners in northern Sydney and the analysis of two popular gardening magazines, the research shows that gardening entails an embodied engagement between active human and non-human actors. Involving processes of collaboration, negotiation, challenge and competition, gardening is a dynamic process. Describing human relations with the plants of the garden, this research argues for gardens to be understood as hybrid achievements.

I conducted a survey of aculeate Hymenoptera in urban and suburban gardens of Brno-city in August 2015. For my survey, I selected three individual gardens, and in each of them chose three type of microhabitats: tree, grass and patch. I used yellow pan traps for taxon sampling. Using this method, I recorded 382 specimens belonging to 76 species. Subsequently, the basic indices of species diversity in individual gardens were calculated, and statistical analyses of individual gardens and various microhabitats were created. I report large differences between the Aculeata taxa found in urban and suburban gardens. Habitat preferences of species between microhabitats were discovered as well. Furthermore, I report 14 species mentioned in the Red List of threatened species of the Czech Republic (Straka 2005a,b) (hereinafter referred to as Red List); as well as one invasive species Isodontia mexicana (Saussure, 1867) and one species Pison atrum Spinola, 1808 recently reported as new for the Czech Republic (reported after the publication of the Red List itself).

Supplementary feeding of wild birds by domestic garden-holders is a globally widespread and popular form of human–wildlife interaction, particularly in urban areas. Vast amounts of energy are thus being added to garden ecosystems. However, the potential indirect effects of this activity on non-avian species have been little studied to date, with the only two previous studies taking place under experimentally manipulated conditions. Here we present the first evidence of a localised depletive effect of wild bird feeding on ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in suburban gardens under the usual feeding patterns of the garden-holders. We trapped significantly fewer ground beetles directly under bird-feeding stations than in matched areas of habitat away from feeders. Video analysis also revealed significantly higher activity by ground-foraging birds under the feeding stations than in the control areas. Small mammal trapping revealed no evidence that these species differ in abundance between gardens with and without bird feeders. We therefore suggest that local increases in ground-foraging activity by bird species whose diets encompass arthropods as well as seed material are responsible for the reduction in ground beetle numbers. Our work therefore illustrates that providing food for wild birds can have indirect negative effects on palatable prey species under typical conditions.

Gardening advice texts evoked women gardeners as active laborers, aesthetically informed designers, participants in the marketplace, and, toward the end of the century, even professional business partners. Reframing women’s relationship to the garden—and to society itself—across the course of Victoria’s reign, such texts do not just imagine feminine power, they hand power over to reading and gardening women. Suburban gardens become, together with the suburban interior, spaces of aesthetic experimentation, apprenticeship, and finally professional practice.

Research on domestic water use has conventionally been confined to understanding the role of physical variables such as rainfall and temperature in influencing patterns of consumption. In limiting research to this narrow focus, the significance of socio‐cultural variables has been largely ignored. This paper seeks to develop socio‐cultural understandings of domestic water use by examining water consumption as part of a broader set of consumption practices associated with suburban space. In particular, the socio‐cultural dimensions are explored on a local scale through an exploration of water‐use patterns associated with the new suburban garden: an important site of home‐making processes, and one associated with a substantial proportion of domestic water consumption. The notion of cultural capital is adopted as a framework for examining these consumption patterns. Water consumption is analysed as a practice through which cultural capital can be accumulated. It is argued that the contrasting notions of social distinction and social conformity in the suburban garden shape the accumulation of cultural capital and influence patterns of water consumption. Understanding these socio‐cultural dimensions of water consumption is important in shaping water‐use management, an issue discussed throughout the paper.

John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843) is often associated with British villas, cottages, and suburban gardens between the 1820s and 1860s. A landscape gardener by profession, he made his reputation as a distinguished horticultural writer with the publication of his Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1822). In the years that followed, Loudon produced encyclopaedias of Agriculture, Architecture, Trees and Shrubs, and Plants: all octavo volumes of more than 1000 pages each, with small print and hundreds of woodcuts. In these works, as in his magazines of gardening, architecture and natural history, Loudon offered a wide range of technical information on climate, soils, and natural resources; construction, heating and ventilating; and discussions of the theory of design as well as criticisms of plans and sections. More immediately appealing to the general public, however, were the hundreds of elevations and perspectives showing cottages and villas in various historical styles; the vignettes of gardens; and the drawings of the indigenous and exotic trees and shrubs then available to the British householder.

THE time of year has arrived when we shall once more be hearing of the ravages of sparrows on crocus blooms, and the theories advanced in order to account for this propensity for destruction on the part of the sparrow in suburban gardens and elsewhere. One pet theory is that the sparrow has a fondness for yellow, and shows it by destroying crocuses of that colour. Most unfortunately for the holders of such an opinion, the sparrow does not confine its attentions to yellow crocuses only, but attacks also the purple, white, &c., as any grower of crocuses can prove. Undoubtedly the yellow suffer most, probably because they are the first to appear, and meet the birds' most pressing requirements. Moreover, the sparrows sometimes attack the flowers while still in the sheath, and before it is certain what colour they will be.

The effect of distastefulness of the model on the predation of artificial batesian mimics

Current knowledge about Shiraz gardening heritage is limited to the outstanding and famous courts and governmental gardens, hence limited data from the other ones has remained. Among these, the garden of Salar-e-Jang (Minou-e-Salar) or Garden of the brave in War (English meaning) is the striking example that was built by Naser-al-din Koupal Shirazi (celebrated Salar-e-Jang) and is worth studying and analyzing. The aim of this study is to re-discover this garden based on memoirs of Terrence O'Donnell who spent nearly 10 years (1960-71) of his life in this garden. His description provides an overview on the Iranian garden planting order in Qajar and Pahlavi era. This current study is the first step in identifying the historic gardens of Ghasroldasht (Bardi) area in Shiraz suburban gardens that has not been investigated yet. Therefore, recognition of geometrical-spatial order of the garden, rereading and understanding the irrigation method and the garden planting patterns have been considered. In addition, the garden has been perceived as a place for various events and social-individual life. The research method was a combination of descriptive-historical strategy and case study based on analytical procedures in a deductive approach. The findings are segmented into four parts which show the stages of development and destruction of the garden. They also show that the gardens are a mixture of two categories of dualities: a) conceptual and b) functional. The paradoxical nature of the garden is identifiable in the conflict between owners and occupants of the garden, contradiction between literary and cultural character of the founder and his unusual habits and finally, the distinction between the notion of Garden and the Farm. also the garden is a mixture of two types: Persian Governmental garden and and orchard. The garden has two perpendicular axes and contrary to usual practices, the pavilion is not placed at the intersection of two longitudinal and transverse axes. This eventually converts a kind of suburban garden from a place for recreation and lounge to a productive farm and orchard garden. As a result the garden turns into a unified social, economic and natural system that indicates the integration of aesthetics with the functional and production aspects of the garden.

Plantings of native flowers are often installed to increase the pollinator habitat in urban and suburban gardens. However, in many regions, it is not known which native plants are best used for pollinator plantings in gardens. Candidate plants must be attractive to pollinators, but they also must have attributes that gardeners find appealing. To identify native plants that are attractive to gardeners, we disseminated two surveys. The first asked gardeners to use a 5-point Likert scale to rate how likely they would be to garden with 23 flowering plants native to the Pacific Northwest United States. The second survey asked gardeners to use a 5-point Likert scale to rate how likely they would be to garden with a subset of 11 of these 23 native plants before and after receiving information about each flower’s attractiveness to bees (Anthophila). Using the first survey, we found a high level of acceptance of native plants by home gardeners (6 of 23 flowers had a mean “likelihood of planting” score of ≥ 4). Additionally, gardeners stated their likelihood of planting these native species increased significantly after receiving information about the bees associated with each plant. Across both surveys, gardeners who identified as “native plant gardeners” stated they would be significantly more likely to garden with all native plant species. Both surveys included an opportunity to share open-ended comments, which revealed that gardeners were most concerned with flower aesthetics and the aggressiveness of growth. Gardeners felt most positively about flower aesthetics and beneficial ecological traits. Many gardeners also commented that they needed more information or were unfamiliar with the plants. This study shows that native plants can have high baseline appeal to home gardeners. Specifically, we identified five native plant species that northwestern U.S. nurseries might consider growing and marketing as pollinator plants because of their high level of attractiveness to bees and home gardeners: globe gilia (Gilia capitata), california poppy (Eschscholzia californica), douglas aster (Symphyotrichum subspicatum), oregon sunshine (Eriophyllum lanatum), and common yarrow (Achillea millefolium).