Planting Future: Multispecies Gardening in the Anthropocene

VW-Research Group:

Planting Future: Multispecies Gardening in the Anthropocene

(2025-2030)

Funded by Volkswagen Foundation

Practice partner: Bayerische Gartenakademie, Head: Claudia Schönmüller

Principal Investigator:

Prof. Dr. Michaela Fenske

Team:

Bayerische Gartenakademie

Claudia Schönmüller, Graduate Engineer
Benjamin Roos, Graduate Engineer
Hubert Siegler, Graduate Engineer(until August 2025)
Silke Knopp, Master Gardener
Isolde Keil-Vierheilig, Horticultural Technician
Kristin Mahler, Horticultural Technician
Gottfried Röll, Horticultural Technician
Doris Winkler, Administration Secretary

European Ethnology

Researcher: Dr. des. Julia Gilfert
Researcher: Sherin-Michelle Grabenstein, M.A.
Student assistants: Eric Fleming + Judith Ocker
Graduate assistants: Anna Lena Seitz B.A.+ NN
Intern: Markus Lüske

Contact: multispeciesgardening@uni-wuerzburg.de

NEW: NACHGEHA(R)KT! The MultiSpecies Gardening Research Group’s Expert Talk

In our new audio format, we talk to scientific researchers and gardening experts about selected topics from our field.

To the first episode

The subprojects

This subproject deals with experiences in the everyday space of the garden in the polycrises of the early 21st century. In their gardens, people experience other living beings every day, because gardens are increasingly important living spaces and shelters for many animals and plants in the 21st century. The subproject deals with the perception of changes, suggestions for dealing with them, and their practical implementation. In this context, the challenges and obstacles of gardening in our time are also addressed. The subproject aims to explore the potentials of the garden space and the practices of gardening for learning about and shaping change. In doing so, the subproject focuses on gardens as spaces for strengthening resilience and sustainability.

Gardens are constantly changing. Environmental influences, switching actors and socio-cultural imaginations have an impact on them. As a result, the understanding of (sustainable) gardening and the respective practices are continuously reshaped: Gardeners question and evaluate their own knowledge as well as it is questioned and evaluated by others. On the one hand, sub project 2 examines the gardeners‘ corpus of knowledge and the ideas of ethics and aesthetics behind it. On the other hand it focuses on how this knowledge is generated and set into practice in times of transformation. Against the background of changing needs and potential effects on cross-species knowledge transfer, the emerging tensions between various ‚multispecies garden actors‘ will also be addressed.

Being inhabited, treated and shaped by many different species, gardens are dynamic living spaces. While some of these species are heavily threatened by the current global polycrisis, others, in turn, are enabled to occupy new areas due to climate change. This subproject focusses on non-native/alien invasive species (neobiota) – meaning animals, plants or fungi as well as microorganisms. Considering ethical, political, aesthetic and emotional aspects, the subproject will discuss how gardeners face different neobiota, what practices they develop in dealing with them, and how these non-native species are constructed within societal discourses and in the media.

Tagung 2026: Zukunft pflanzen? Neue Früchte und alte Sorten in ländlichen Ökonomien

September 10–12, 2026

A conference organized by the Chair of European Ethnology at the University of Würzburg and the Bavarian Academy for Private Horticulture in Veitshöchheim (funded by the VW Research Group Multispecies Gardening) as well as the Commission for Cultural Analysis of the Rural of the DGEKW.