Urban Forest Gardens as a new form of co-created and co-managed urban forests

Urban Forest Gardens can be considered a new type of urban forest, which imitate the structure of a forest with mainly edible plants in several vegetation layers. Apart from ecological benefits that result from its forest-like structure, forest gardens provide a bridge to participatory food production in cities and involve citizens in this multifunctional and long-term form of urban gardening. In the German Urban Forest Garden Project (Projekt Urbane Waldgärten) three model urban forest gardens were developed in a participatory way since 2019 and implemented since 2021 in different urban areas within the cities of Berlin and Kassel. Each of the urban forest gardens has been co-created by local administrations, associations, citizens and planners, coordinated by the model project team. They are maintained and used by citizen groups in different organizational forms. For all of the model projects the aim is to develop and test new forms of cooperation and governance in a public green space. . Insights will be given in the project development requirements that can be adapted and transferred to different city contexts, as well as into results from ecological and socio-economic monitoring. While cooling effects are slow to detect, as woody species are still rather small, water regulation improved quickly and the increases in floristic and faunistic biodiversity are surprisingly fast. Also, the development of organizational and inclusive social structures, which have developed together with the forest gardens are promising forms of sustainable urban forest management. The experiences from the model project are different in the three different sites, and hence the project observes these model projects to derive general recommendations for implementation including insights in the main success factors as well as concerning the particular challenges in the management of this special type of urban forest.