Initiatives to Promote Ecosystem and Human Health

This chapter examines four programs where public gardens have contributed horticultural and ecological expertise to partnerships for the management of public landscapes and to increase public access to nature. In collaboration with other community institutions, the Missouri Botanical Garden, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, and Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens have assumed a range of roles, including those of community convener, technical expert, and innovator, as part of initiatives that support the environmental health of their communities. The initiatives investigated in this chapter demonstrate that efforts to improve a community's environmental conditions must recognize the importance of understanding what the natural environment means locally and that a community has more than one story about its relationship to the natural environment. A community's history and the experiences of all its residents influence the perceived relevance of the natural environment, and the ways in which people conceptualize the need for and potential benefits of green space. In the cases of Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond and the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, these environmental initiatives succeeded when they met their respective communities where they were, both physically and experientially. The chapter reveals an overarching recognition that partners and community stakeholders cannot “buy into” an environmental vision or initiative if they do not understand it.