“Such a beautiful thuja hedge!” – “Well, the neighbor has a wonderfully well-kept lawn!” Such thoughts are circulating in many areas. But do gardens that look neat make sense for nature? A large project by the Nature Conservation Association, Joanneum Research in Graz, IIASA in Laxenburg and Boku in Vienna is now using the gardens of private individuals as an approach to increasing awareness of biodiversity and climate protection. On biodiverciti.joanneum.at Interested people can get in touch to take part in the study. The Biodiverciti project has been running since 2025 and until 2027.
So far, several hundred people have taken part as citizen scientists, ensuring diversity and climate resilience in their gardens and documenting measures and changes. “In the first year of the project, 400 households took part. Now we are starting the second growing season,” says Sebastian Seebauer from the “International Climate Policy and Economics” research group at Joanneum Research.
“The biodiversity crisis is the next major crisis that is approaching us, in addition to climate change. Of course the two are connected, but biodiversity in particular is very abstract for many people and cannot be experienced in concrete terms,” says Seebauer. The Biodiverciti project enables people to experience biodiversity in a place with which they have a very close relationship: their own garden.
The hope is that dealing with this can also trigger changes or a reflection process in other climate and environmentally relevant behaviors. Anyone who sees from their patio door how resistant nature is to climate fluctuations as the biodiversity of animals and plants increases may also be committed to using resources such as water, oil, natural gas or plastic sparingly.
Stone walls attract e.g. B. lizards. Biodiversity
Seebauer says: “The people with the largest gardens are often the people with a large ecological footprint.” Such properties are often located on the outskirts of the city or in rural areas where people live in large houses and have to travel most of the way by car. “It’s a contradiction: you look after your garden as a piece of nature for relaxation, but on the other hand, your lifestyle is designed in such a way that it cannot be environmentally and climate-friendly.” If you want to quickly bring more environmental friendliness into your life, your “biggest lever is nutrition,” says Seebauer. “Seasonal, regional and low-meat organic food is particularly climate and biodiversity friendly.”
One aspect of the research is how the understanding of aesthetics plays into the use of the garden. In places where an English lawn with a self-propelled robot is considered pretty to look at, and where one appreciates a dense cherry laurel or thuja hedge on the neighboring property, the ideas of nature conservation and species-rich ecosystems will not immediately prevail as aesthetic or desirable.
Biodiversity increases if simple measures are taken. Biodiversity
“One of the first measures that everyone can implement is to create a landscape rich in structure. If a garden contains a dry spot, a damp corner, perhaps a stack of stones, dead wood, piles of leaves and sections that are rarely mown, then the biodiversity increases in a very short time,” emphasizes Seebauer.
The participating citizen scientists document the sightings of plants and animals using photos using the apps iNaturalist or naturObservation.at.
So far, participants have been recruited through nature conservation associations, the “Nature in the Garden” initiative from Lower Austria or the networks from states and communities in the climate-energy model regions. The project, which is funded by the Climate and Energy Fund in the Austrian Climate Research Program, also wants to reach people outside the climate protection bubble. “In the second round, we will approach people at garden centers using flyers and information stands in order to be able to generate a larger amount of data,” says Seebauer. Experience so far shows that dealing with the topic of biodiversity is motivating to do some detective research in your own garden: What changes can be observed if I have implemented this or that measure?
The measures for your own garden are staggered, depending on the motivation of the participants. What is easy for everyone, what do highly active climate protectors implement? “We make it easy to get started so that you can immediately experience success and see what works,” says Seebauer. For example, every household can avoid pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers or mow less often. “You can thin out the soil and leave a wild corner in the garden, or you can sow a flower meadow.”
Greening is very easy in any garden: you increase the structures and different habitats from dry to moist, from sunny to shady. Biodiversity
More ambitious participants can create piles of dead wood, create small water biotopes or change existing plants. “If you tear out thuja or cherry laurel hedges and replace them with native perennials and bushes, you are doing biodiversity a big favor,” emphasizes the climate researcher, who doesn’t have a garden himself but rather a small balcony. He recommends hazel, alder, raspberries or elderberry as a hedge. You get something out of it yourself (picking berries, making juice) and it offers a good habitat for birds, small animals and insects.
An important aspect of the research is also what the surroundings of the gardens are like: Are there agricultural areas nearby? Can pesticides and herbicides be introduced from there or from neighboring gardens? Are pests migrating? “Your beautiful, biodiverse garden can suffer from the neighbor spraying the Roundup poison right up to the fence. Likewise, your neighbor can complain that the snails are wandering over to him,” says Seebauer, describing the potential for conflict.
