My Garden Lab, Research in the backyard

The strategic objectives of this Citizen Science project are: 1) to bring scientific research questions into peoples' backyards, 2) to be a catalyst for interdisciplinary scientific research on gardens, and 3) to bring about involvement and behavioral change of garden owners. We hope that this will lead to long term improvement of the ecosystem functions of the garden landscape and to a higher appreciation of gardens as a fully-fledged part of the living environment.

In order to achieve our goals, we set up My Garden Lab, a platform for citizen science in gardens. People can register their garden on this platform, where they find a variety of information about their garden and the surrounding garden landscape and where they are invited to participate in citizen science projects. Also schools are encouraged to participate in the context of a STEM-project.

All figures from the own garden can be consulted in the garden profile, and can be presented in interactive charts, enabling participants to become acquainted with scientific data processing. These own results can also be compared with those from other (anonymised) gardens in Flanders. Participants gain a better insight in the role of their own green space in the entire green-blue network, and get aware of the effects of their own actions on, among other things, climate and biodiversity.

After completion of the project, the data are published as open data on the website and / or offered to relevant external open data portals.

The project is a collaboration between the Coordinator Knowledge Center Garden + (Erasmus Hogeschool Brussels), Natuurpunt and KU Leuven (Departments 'Forest, Nature and Landscape' and, 'Geography and Tourism', SADL)