Gardening Against the Polycrisis

02/13/2025

Researchers from the Würzburg Chair of European Ethnology want to investigate how gardeners deal with change - and to what extent conclusions can be drawn about our society.

Popular hobby: There are around 17 million private gardens in Germany. (Image: Joshua Resnick / AdobeStock)

What challenges does the gardening community face? How do they deal with them? And what can we as a society learn from the processes in and around the garden habitat?

A new group at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) is looking into questions like these: Planting Future: Multispecies Gardening in the Anthropocene (in short: "Multispecies Gardening").

It is headed by Professor Michaela Fenske. The Chair of European Ethnology / Empirical Cultural Studies has also secured the practical expertise of the Bavarian Garden Academy for the project.

The Volkswagen Foundation is funding the five-year project as part of the "Change!" initiative with over 1.2 million euros.

The foundation hopes that those receiving funding will become "agents of change" and provide impetus for social progress and improvements.

Science Meets Practice

"Change!" focusses on cooperation between researchers and non-scientific institutions. In the Würzburg project, the Bavarian Garden Academy fulfils the second part. It is part of the Bavarian State Institute for Viticulture and Horticulture and specifically addresses the concerns of leisure gardeners.

"Multispecies Gardening" focusses on an area that is itself subject to constant change, but can also be seen as a microcosm of change and adaptability in society: private gardens.

Gardening Makes You Adaptable

According to the Institute for Economic Research, there are around 17 million private gardens in Germany. "When gardening, we humans create a habitat that we share with many other organisms," explains Michaela Fenske, "at the same time, gardens are exposed to various transformative processes: climate change, species extinction or invasive species."

The Bavarian Garden Academy provides support in adapting to such events. Its director Claudia Schönmüller knows: "Gardeners are fundamentally solution-orientated. We help them to come to terms with changes. If certain plant species can no longer cope with the regional climatic conditions, for example, we advise on more resilient varieties or alternative species."

Close Contact With Gardeners

In order to find out how people perceive change in their gardens, how they deal with it and what they need to master it, the research group wants to get in close contact with the population. "Gardens are particularly widespread among the middle class. According to sustainability research, this group is less inclined towards transformation, but it also harbours great potential for change," says Michaela Fenske. The professor believes that gardeners generally have a great understanding of cross-species coexistence and the influence of humans on their environment.

This influence is now so great that science has coined the term Anthropocene. An age of the earth named after man (ancient Greek ánthropos) and how he shapes our planet.

From the Garden to the World

Not only gardens, but also our society as a whole is struggling with various challenges: climate change, economic turbulence or social and political tensions. In the early 1990s, the French philosopher Edgar Morin coined the term polycrisis to describe this: an interplay of several crises that not only exist side by side, but also overlap and reinforce each other.

The research group is therefore interested in how perceived transformation and lived adaptation on a small scale can be transferred to other areas of life.

"The ecological challenges in the garden call for new practices, plants and fruits as well as new attitudes, ethics and aesthetics," say Fenske and Schönmüller.

Versatile Approach to the Topic

"Multispecies Gardening" will not only produce scientific studies. Various formats are planned, from exhibitions to books and films. Above all, it is important that the research is presented in an accessible way. The official starting date is 1 April 2025.

Initially, the research group will focus on Lower Franconia, with Germany-wide projects to follow. Interested gardeners can already get in touch with the research group at multispeciesgardening@uni-wuerzburg.de.