A new participatory conservation framework built on the rise of native plant gardening

Ingmar R. Staude, Ralf Engel, Rolf Engelmann, Karsten Mody, Thomas Puhlmann, Josiane Segar, Friedhelm Strickler, Christian Wirth, Reinhard Witt

Global biodiversity strategies are ambitious on paper but fall short in practice. It is not strategy we lack but the capacity to translate these plans into action on the ground. Akin to the community scientists that revolutionized biodiversity monitoring, we posit that community stewards, emerging from the growing native plant gardening movement, could help scale up science-informed plant conservation. We present evidence that willingness to engage in conservation efforts is high within this community. To unlock this potential, we propose a framework that links stewards with the complementary strengths of existing institutions: the scientific expertise of botanical gardens, the legal mandates of conservation programs, the horticultural capacity of native plant producers, and the social infrastructure of gardening networks. Three case studies show how our framework could be operationalized. Activating the native plant gardening movement to bolster on-the-ground conservation may offer a promising way to narrow the knowing–doing gap in conservation.