Residential sidewalk gardens and biological conservation in the cities: Motivations and preferences that guide the floristic composition of a little-explored space

Abstract

Plant diversity in large cities has recently become a subject of intense biological research. Urban green spaces are widely acknowledged to improve people's quality of life. Unlike in wild areas, plants in urban ecosystems develop in spaces strongly managed by human activity and tend to form different compositions than the natural landscape. Under this scenario, would the motivations and preferences of urbanresidents make it possible to conserve a sample of the local diversity in these spaces? To answer this question, we apply a semistructured survey to 100 homes that have a residential sidewalk garden in Santiago de Chile. Our results show that these gardens are perceived as an essential part of the home and its environment. We recognized three groups of citizens, namely, a utilitarian group (19 %), native group (21 %) and neutral group (60 %). The utilitarian group prefers to grow useful plants, such as for medicine or food. The neutral group does not indicate a preference for particular attributes of plants, which could be an indicator of the extinction of the experience with nature. Most of the participants do not know the origin of the species they grow.However, even when knowledge of native flora is limited (X¯ = 0.96; max = 3.0), citizens recognize the intrinsic value of these species and would be willing to conserve them in their gardens (X¯ = 4.35; max = 7.0). This willingness is also motivated by the set of benefits provided by native plants (e.g., ornamental, ecological, structural or emotional). Greater knowledge of native flora in the native group can be attributed to familiarity; therefore, the presence of these species in residential sidewalk gardens could encourage preferences and decisions aimed at promoting the conservation of local plant diversity.