On September 22, the Log Lunch community welcomed Theresa Ong ’09 as the first guest speaker of the year to discuss her research regarding socioecological constructions of community in urban gardens. Theresa, who now serves as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and Ecology, Evolution, Environment and Society at Dartmouth College, was introduced by biology professor Joan Edwards, who highlighted the unique blend of theoretical ecology, mathematical modeling, and hands-on approaches that Theresa brings to her work.
Theresa, who was a biology and Chinese double major at Williams, said that a lot of the inspiration for her work now comes from her time in the Purple Valley, specifically her studies of botany with Professor Edwards, Professor David Smith, and Professor Hank Art.
For the first time in history, more people are living in urban areas than rural ones across the globe. This significant land use change, Theresa said, carries enormous consequences for ecological function.
“Luckily, community gardens are found in cities,” Theresa said “Old and new residents can share culture related to food systems, and these gardens are increasingly recognized as hotspots of biodiversity.”
This illustrates a dialectical framework that Theresa called “the heart of environmental studies” — the social influences the ecological, and the ecological, in turn, influences the social.
Theresa’s research was organized into three projects to examine how this dialectic is at play in urban gardens. In the first project, she found that urban gardens have high numbers of rare plant, bird, and bee species.
“These species are not necessarily of conservation concern or specialists, but still contribute to functional diversification within the city,” Theresa said. She found a strong positive association between richness of rare plants and rare bees, and between rare birds and rare bees. This suggests that mutualistic relationships are at play, as rare species create novel environments that support other less common species.
In the first project, Theresa also found that social drivers of rare plant biodiversity included female and elderly gardeners, and gardeners who live in close proximity to their garden sites. This illustrates the ways in which bringing knowledge from different positionalities into the garden can be important in creating higher species diversity.
In the second project, Theresa found that urban gardens tend to disappear where land security, or the prevalence of home ownership over renting, is high.
“When gardens disappear, sites are often being developed into buildings, which of course provide important services,” Theresa said. “But it is important to preserve gardens in cities for social and ecological services.”
Theresa conducted this research in Northern California, where she partnered with the Community Agroecology Network to create storymaps exploiting community members’ experiences with land use change.
In the third project, Theresa worked with the Trustees of Reservation in Boston, and found that high land security was associated with more trees and perennial plants, which have the potential to provide ecosystem services. Trees are unequally distributed in city gardens in Boston, with the highest prevalence in predominantly white neighborhoods with high rates of home ownership.
This pattern is tied to the city’s history. In the early 1900s, when tens of thousands of immigrants were moving into Boston, the South End was filled with rooming houses, sheltering groups of families or individuals instead of single families. People in these houses had been growing gardens in vacant lots. When the city tried to clear out these houses and eliminate the gardens, the community came together and resisted.
Trees and perennial plants, along with ecological benefits, can be an expression of permanence and belonging for a community in a place. “Neighborhood gardens build community,” Theresa said, speaking to the importance of distributing these things equitably. “And distinct communities grow distinct communities of plants.”
The Log Lunch cooks served a delicious meal of veggie chili, with onions and carrots from Big Foot Farm, complete with sides of buttermilk cornbread, sour cream, pickled onions, and a dill, radish, and cucumber salad. They also baked tahini chocolate chip cookies for a warm, salty-sweet dessert.