With your hands in the soil? A critical analysis of how amateur gardeners understand and act on environmental threats through mundane practices

The purpose of the project is to analyze how everyday understandings of environmental threats, such as climate change and biodiversity loss, are manifested through gardeners’ mundane practices. Gardens are socio-ecological systems with the potential to support a range of ecosystem services and habitats.

How gardens are constructed are dependent on socio-cultural values and understandings of the environment. They illustrate how understandings of climate change and biodiversity are manifested through mundane practices.

The following research questions are in focus: What key environmental threats do gardeners identify as relevant for their gardening practices?

Where do gardeners get their knowledge about environmental threats and how they should act to be environmentally friendly? How do gardeners translate knowledge of environmental threats to material practices? How are environmental threats communicated through garden media outlets such as magazines, tv, podcasts and blogs?

Based on the above, how can scientific advice on sustainable gardening practices be communicated to gardeners?

Brought together these questions will provide knowledge of how climate change and biodiversity are understood and manifested in an everyday life perspective.

Key research methods are interviews and participant observation with gardeners, and content analysis of gardening journals, blogs and television series.