Perception and knowledge of plant diversity among urban park users

• We compared plant species richness perceptions between park users and a botanist.
• Park users better recognized cultivated versus wild plants compared to the botanist.
• Plant species richness is mainly appreciated for the beauty and sense of well being it provides.
• Park users may accept a park more hospitable to wild plants but not less managed.
• We propose recommendations conciliating plant conservation and park users’ needs.

For several decades, ecological studies have suggested that urbanized environments can be viewed as biodiversity refuges, thus broadening conservation concerns from pristine to urban green areas. Despite the increasing motivation to conserve areas where humans live and work, the conservation of urban biodiversity rarely takes citizens’ knowledge, perception, and needs into account. Interdisciplinary-based conservation is thus urgently needed in order to bridge this gap. We therefore studied a park located in Paris (France) where we combined ecological and human sciences to question a botanist and 100 park users about their knowledge and perceptions of plant richness. We then assessed the role of plant richness on people's perception of the services provided by the park. Our findings show that park users mainly recognized the cultivated plants promoted by gardeners, whereas the botanist more frequently observed spontaneous plants. Furthermore, the plant richness estimation by park users was much lower than the botanist's count. The users were attentive to the surrounding plant richness because of its beauty and its effect on their sense of well-being, whereas its role in biodiversity and ecological functions were less relevant. Finally, although the knowledge of plant richness among park users was poor and focused on ornamental plants, they preferred to consider wild plant management in terms of cohabitation rather than removal, which may indicate a desire for more naturalistic landscapes. We discuss these results and propose several recommendations for improving biodiversity conservation in green parks without undermining the park users’ well-being.