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Poster Short Abstract

Community gardens can serve as living labs where researchers and civil society co-create biodiversity interventions. Here we present our approach, focusing on how changing roles and expertise across various formats of collaboration created dynamic partnerships for urban ecological transformation.

Poster Abstract

The urban ecological transformation requires cooperations that extend beyond disciplinary boundaries and traditional institutional structures. In our project with community gardens in Berlin and Munich, Germany, we have linked ecological research on pollinators with gardeners’ practical expertise and the facilitation of civil society organizations. Over the past five years, we jointly developed and tested multiple collaboration formats: from citizen science data collection over co-created guidelines for biodiversity interventions to environmental education, science communication and the implementation of interventions in the gardens and surrounding neighborhoods. With each project phase, new actors joined and roles evolved, creating a dynamic interplay of expertise and responsibilities. This process not only generated strategies for shaping biodiversity-friendly cities but also insights into how collaboration formats and shifting roles themselves become drivers of innovation. On our poster, we present examples of these practices and reflect on the lessons they offer for building sustainable partnerships between science and society.