The Powerful Garden. Emerging views on the garden complex

Although domestic gardens cover a significant area, they are one of the
least known land use categories.
Hidden behind the façade of urban
and residential development, they are currently a footnote in housing
policy and not explicit included in spatial planning, socio-economic
and environmental policies. Households consider domestic gardens
mainly as little paradises, safe family havens and places of direct contact
with nature. However, hundreds of thousands of gardens make
a big thing. The collectivity of domestic gardens – the ‘garden complex’
– can play a strategic role in various challenges of our society
like public health, environment, biodiversity, food security and climate
change.

This book presents a collection of emerging views on the garden
complex in order to put the garden on the different agendas of
research and policy. It collects the current state of knowledge on gardens
from different experts in various disciplines, mainly in a Flemish
context.

The authors write about:

• the background of the present-day Flemish garden
• their spatial distribution and connection
• the impact of gardens on the environment
• biodiversity in gardens
• the role of gardens in the livability of neighborhoods

Together with other green themes like greenways, community gardens and urban agriculture,
domestic gardens are part of an important rural-urban interface. It is
time for more systematic research on gardens, and planners and managers
should give more attention to the green faces of development in
their strategies towards enhanced sustainability.

Valerie Dewaelheyns and Kirsten Bomans are researcher at the Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven in the department of Earth and Environmental
Sciences.
Hubert Gulinck is professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and
teaches courses in Landscape Analysis, Rural Land Use, and Land Use
and Land Cover Monitoring.