Olivia Besters has looked after her local street tree beds for more than 35 years. As towns and cities grow, biodiversity is being squeezed into ever smaller spaces while people experience a progressive loss of everyday contact with nature. Street tree beds \u2013 and the practice of caring for them \u2013 offer cities a way to counter urban biodiversity loss while enriching people\u2019s connection with nature in their neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n Our research<\/a> shows that citizen stewardship of street tree beds can boost species richness and diversity in urban areas. <\/p>\n For years, officials in Freiburg, a city known for being green and eco-conscious<\/a>, had noticed residents informally planting and caring for the small patches of soil around street trees. In 2004, the city formalised this activity through its tree sponsorship programme, or Baumpatenschaftsprogramm<\/a>, creating a way to organise and support something residents, like Besters, were already doing.<\/p>\n Biodiversity was built into the concept, but has become much more prominent over time. In 2010, the city joined forces with the Ecostation<\/a>, an environmental education centre in Freiburg to launch Freiburg bl\u00fcht auf<\/a> (Freiburg in bloom). This initiative connected tree bed stewards directly with ecologists, providing stewards with seeds, plants and advice on turning street tree beds into small habitats for native plants and insects. The result, according to the city, are \u201csmall flowering islands\u201d<\/a> that can help the soil retain moisture and provide habitats and food for insects. <\/p>\n Until our research was published, however, there was little data to show what these tiny spaces were actually contributing to urban biodiversity.<\/p>\n In our first study<\/a>, we surveyed plants growing in 200 street tree beds, comparing 100 beds actively stewarded by residents with 100 similar beds that were not stewarded. Over three months, we recorded 474 plant species growing across these beds. We found that stewarded beds supported around 1.6 times as many plant species as the non-stewarded beds. Although stewarded beds contained more non-native plants than non-stewarded beds, they also supported more native plant species and more varied plant communities. <\/p>\n Stewardship supports plant species richness and diversity in street tree beds. Through surveys and interviews with more than 100 stewards in Freiburg, participants told us they were very conscious of this ecological role. Planting tree beds can \u201creally promote biodiversity\u201d in what might otherwise be a \u201cconcrete district\u201d, said Shari, a 62-year-old steward who has been caring for one tree bed for six years.<\/p>\n Hank\u2019s tree bed. Participants frequently described tending their tree beds as relaxing, restorative, absorbing and meaningful. For Besters, it\u2019s \u201cpure relaxation\u201d that feels \u201cgood for my soul\u201d. Hank (a 39-year-old steward who has cared for one tree bed for about three years) reports: \u201cI\u2019m so focused \u2026 when I do something in the [tree bed] \u2026 I forget the world.\u201d <\/p>\n Care and connection<\/p>\n Caring for tree beds also helps stewards connect with neighbours and the wider community, while encouraging others to take up stewardship themselves. One steward described receiving \u201ca lot of positive recognition from people I don\u2019t know\u201d, while another said an \u201cinsane number of people\u201d stop to chat while she is gardening her tree bed. <\/p>\n Once she transformed a neglected tree bed into a clearly cared-for space, Besters noticed that people began treating it differently: dog excrement and litter declined. Visible signs of care signal that a place is valued, which can prompt more respectful behaviour from others. <\/p>\n In one of our early studies<\/a>, we found that 73% of stewards reported first learning about street tree bed stewardship from a neighbour or by seeing someone actively gardening a tree bed. This reinforced previous studies<\/a> that suggest visible gardening practices can cluster spatially as nearby residents observe and replicate one another\u2019s actions. <\/p>\n In Freiburg, more than 500 residents now participate in the tree sponsorship programme, caring for approximately 700 tree beds. Around 3% of the city\u2019s 22,000 street trees are stewarded. Enhancing even a portion of the remaining beds could expand habitat for plants and insects and, when strategically located, create ecological stepping stones that reduce isolation and support species movement between larger green spaces.<\/p>\n The social potential of these tree beds may scale in a similar way: stewardship can make these small public spaces meaningful relatively quickly, creating chances for people to connect with nature, develop a stronger sense of place and interact with both neighbours and strangers. And because these acts of care are highly visible, they can inspire others to participate, creating more stewardship, more habitat and more opportunities for nature and social connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Olivia Besters began caring for the patch of soil beneath the chestnut tree outside her home in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-631965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Woman](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/file-20260914-50-ywy4br.jpeg\")
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