“In the garden, I make up for what I can’t in the park”: Reconnecting retired adults with nature through cultural ecosystem services from urban gardens

Abstract

While cultural ecosystem services (CES) provided by collective urban gardens have been researched for more than a decade, how knowledge of CES can inform the governance of gardens and enhance gardeners’ wellbeing remains a challenge. Retired adults are a group whose lives can be especially improved by collective gardening. We interviewed users of community and allotment gardens in Zagreb to explore their motivations for gardening and the influence of different forms of garden management on the generation of CES. Their responses were supplemented and contextualised by interviews with urban planners, academics and gardening activists. We used Fish et al. (2016) framework to identify CES in interviews. As expected, CES drove gardeners’ engagement. We grouped their motivations into six categories: escape, usefulness and tradition, home-grown produce, socialising, wellness, and private oasis. Interestingly, food production was only of secondary importance as a motivator of urban gardening. Findings are used to outline recommendations for urban planners and decision-makers regarding planning, design and management of collective gardens that would amplify the generation of CES for retired gardeners.