{"id":1145,"date":"2020-02-02T18:45:03","date_gmt":"2020-02-02T18:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/?p=1145"},"modified":"2025-11-14T14:47:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T22:47:07","slug":"what-exactly-is-garden-ecology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/2020\/02\/02\/what-exactly-is-garden-ecology\/","title":{"rendered":"What Exactly is \u201cGarden\u201d Ecology?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the Garden Ecology Lab,\nresearchers are studying specific pieces of the garden ecology puzzle,\nincluding soil nutrient levels, pollinators, and native plants. But what\nexactly is \u201cgarden ecology\u201d, and why is studying it important?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start by defining our\nterms. If you hear the word \u201cgarden\u201d, some pretty specific pictures may come to\nmind, but it is really a very broad term, encompassing anything from pots on a\npatio to acres of arboretum. A garden is by definition a human-influenced system\ninvolving plants, but there are many human-influenced landscapes that are not\nconsidered gardens, such as agricultural fields (though gardens may grow food),\ngolf courses (though a garden could include a putting green), tree farms\n(though many gardens have trees), and parks (though ornamental plants may grow in\nparks). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Urban vegetable garden<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Brittanica defines a garden as a \u201cPlot of ground where herbs, fruits, flowers, vegetables, or trees are cultivated<\/a>.\u201d  This suggests that the keys are variety and control. A garden is typically composed of a variety of different plants and types of spaces\u2026not unlike a natural ecosystem! In addition, there is the element of control (cultivation). Human choice and aesthetic sensibilities strongly influence what plants grow in a garden. Even a very naturalistic garden has some human-imposed order in it, or it wouldn\u2019t be a garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Naturalistic urban garden<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Now\nwe get to \u201cecology\u201d. Ecology is a relatively new natural science, with\nbeginnings in the early 1900\u2019s, when scientists in Europe and the U.S. began to\nstudy plant communities. At first animal and plant communities were studied\nseparately, but eventually American biologists began to emphasize the interrelatedness\nof both communities.1<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nword Ecology (originally oekologie<\/em>) comes from the Greek oikos<\/em>, meaning \u201chousehold,\u201d \u201chome,\u201d or \u201cplace to live\u201d,\nso ecology is the study of the relations and interactions between organisms and\ntheir environment \u2013 the place they live.  Brittanica further clarifies that \u201cThese\ninteractions between individuals, between populations, and between organisms\nand their environment form ecological systems, or ecosystems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study\nof ecology most often takes place in natural, or near-natural, areas, such as a\nforest, meadow or mountain. Ecologists study these wilderness environments,\nsearching for guidance on how to restore degraded ones. This reinforces the common\nconcept of nature as being \u201cout there\u201d, far away from where most people live. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Urban\necology studies parks, greenbelts, and forest preserves \u2013 the large, public\ngreen spaces of a city. But garden ecology? Can something as small as most\ngardens have an ecology at all? And why should we care?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, if you have a garden, and spend much time caring for it, then you are a part of the ecology of that place. Every person who manages a plot of land, however small, is part of the ecology of that land, and all of them together, along with the other people and parts of a city, form the ecology of that city. What is done on those small plots, what grows and lives (or doesn\u2019t) on each one, multiplied by hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of individual plots, has the potential to influence the ecosystem \u2013 and the health \u2013 of the entire city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ndeeply-entrenched American reverence for lawns means that, at present, the\nrelatively barren landscape of manicured, often chemical-soaked turf is the\ndominant ecosystem in most cities. Ecologically speaking, such sites don\u2019t\ncontribute much to the local ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that is changing, as more people become aware that a diverse, densely-planted landscape can support a diverse cast of fauna and provide many ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration. This enriches the local ecosystem immeasurably. If this stewardship ethic can be multiplied by even a fraction of the yards in a city, we will begin to see that \u201cgarden ecology\u201d is another name for OUR ecology. It is the interrelationship of we humans to the plants and animals, stones and streams, among which we make our homes. It is part of understanding that nature is not just far away, in pristine wilderness. Nature is right here, sipping nectar from your flowers, nesting in your trees, burrowing under your feet and buzzing past your nose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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https:\/\/www.piqsels.com\/en\/public-domain-photo-oluru<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

1<\/sup>https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/science\/ecology<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Garden Ecology Lab, researchers are studying specific pieces of the garden ecology puzzle, including soil nutrient levels, pollinators, and native plants. But what exactly is \u201cgarden ecology\u201d, and why is studying it important? Let\u2019s start by defining our terms. If you hear the word \u201cgarden\u201d, some pretty specific pictures may come to mind, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8006,"featured_media":1148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1295192],"tags":[2613,1324,120167,88912],"class_list":["post-1145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-garden-ecology","tag-definitions","tag-ecology","tag-garden","tag-management","has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/osu-wams-blogs-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs.dir\/2786\/files\/2020\/02\/Urban-vegetable-garden.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8006"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1145"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1155,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions\/1155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}