Garden management and soil fertility in Flemish domestic gardens

Collectively domestic gardens form an important landscape component, but environmental and land usepolicies tend to ignore domestic gardens. This paper investigates nutrient cycling in domestic gardens:fertilizer and soil conditioner use, composting, removal of grass clippings and the soil fertility states in thecase of Flanders (the northern part of Belgium). Data was assembled from an internet survey about gardenmanagement and a database on soil fertility of domestic gardens. The combined analysis of these datareveals new insight in the link between garden management and the chemical condition in gardens (interms of soil carbon content, pH and phosphate). Flemish gardeners used 0.07 kg fertilizer and removed2.3 l grass clippings per m2garden in 2007. Meanwhile, garden soils appear to have a higher pH andphosphorus content and lawns a lower carbon content than optimal agronomic standards. These insightsshow that gardens are a dynamic socio-ecological system with considerable nutrient flows from and tothe household and the environment, indicating the need for more detailed and systematic environmentalmonitoring. This way, domestic gardens can be compared to agriculture, horticulture and other land usetypes. This and complementary research helps to complete insights in the dynamics across complex ruraland urban landscapes. Future research should take into account, among other things, prevailing practicesand habits of garden owners.