In the middle of our sprawling cities, hemmed in by concrete, glass and steel, there's a quiet revolution waiting to happen. It's not unfolding in government offices or shiny architectural projects, but in something far more familiar: our private gardens.

Those patches of green behind terraces, tucked alongside suburban semis, or wedged into urban courtyards might just be the key to rewilding our cities and healing our relationship with the natural world.

And if you ask cultural geographer Damien Deville, they could even help us rethink how we live together as communities, how we value our landscapes, and how we confront the massive ecological challenges ahead.

Let’s step into the garden gate and explore why.

A Different Way to See the Land

Damien Deville isn’t your typical geographer. He’s not the type buried in technical zoning documents or obsessed with plotting maps. Instead, he belongs to a school of thought known as cultural geography — a discipline that looks at the territories we inhabit through the lens of human relationships, memories, stories, and emotional ties.

In his view, spaces aren't just blank canvases to be built over or resources to be exploited. They are living, breathing environments shaped by the bonds we create with them - and with each other.

Instead of approaching urban planning with cold efficiency, Damien encourages us to ask: how do we feel about our surroundings? How do we interact with nature? How can these relationships inspire new ways of building, living, and thriving?

This perspective might feel soft compared to hard urbanism, but it might be exactly the kind of thinking we need if we’re serious about creating cities that are not just sustainable but deeply connected to the places they sit on.

What Japan Can Teach Us About Living with Nature

One fascinating part of Deville’s work touches on Japan, a country whose cultural traditions offer valuable lessons in balancing modern life with respect for the natural world.

In Japan, the historical divide between nature and culture – so stark in Western thinking – simply isn’t there. Sure, Japan has experienced major rural exoduses and the fierce march of industrialisation, but there’s also a deep-rooted respect for the land, a legacy of Shinto and Buddhist beliefs that see spirits in rivers, trees, and rocks.

Take Japanese agriculture: when modern farming equipment arrived, remodelling the countryside wasn’t done with bulldozers flattening ancient fields. Instead, small rototillers were used, carefully navigating the spiritual and cultural landmarks that dotted the land.

The result? A landscape that modernised without entirely erasing its past. One where villages, despite everything, still feel anchored to their living heritage.

It's a reminder that development doesn’t have to mean destruction. And that maybe, just maybe, we can modernise in ways that honour the ecosystems and cultures we inherit.

Small Forests in Big Cities

It’s not just philosophy either. This idea of gentle transformation has real-world urban applications.

One inspiring example discussed was the spread of “mini forests” — tiny pockets of dense, native forest planted right inside cities. Initially pioneered in Japan by Akira Miyawaki, this concept has taken root as far away as Jordan, where projects in Amman have shown how even small patches of greenery can help cool cities, clean the air, and support biodiversity.

Imagine that: cooling an entire urban neighbourhood, not with costly tech, but by planting a few hundred square metres of well-chosen trees.

It’s a vision that's simple, almost humble – and yet radical.

The Power Hidden in Private Gardens

When it comes to rewilding cities, most discussions focus on big parks, green belts, or sprawling urban renewal projects. But what if the real, immediate power lay somewhere else entirely — in the gardens of ordinary people?

Deville argues that private gardens are a vital, massively underused resource. These little scraps of green collectively make up a significant percentage of urban land. Yet they’re rarely planned with ecological health in mind. They're seen more as personal refuges or decorative spaces.

The opportunity is enormous. If enough gardens across a city were rethought to support wildlife – planting native species, banning pesticides, welcoming wildflowers, building insect hotels – we could stitch together a patchwork of micro-habitats. Gardens could become vital stepping stones for birds, insects, and small mammals trying to survive urban environments.

We’re not talking about giving up barbecues and flower beds. We’re talking about working with nature instead of against it.

France’s New Urban Challenge: Zéro Artificialisation Nette

In France, policymakers have started to wake up to the urgent need to protect soil and natural spaces. The Zéro Artificialisation Nette (ZAN) law is a bold attempt to completely stop the expansion of urban areas into farmland and nature.

The idea is clear: if you want more urban space, you have to redevelop what already exists, not gobble up new land.

It’s an ambitious move — but as Deville points out, the devil is in the detail. While officials talk about densifying cities and adding more green infrastructure, almost nobody is seriously considering how private gardens fit into the plan.

This is a major oversight. After all, private gardens are one of the easiest, least disruptive ways to introduce biodiversity back into cities without touching a single new plot of natural land.

If the ZAN project is to succeed, it can't just be about preventing further damage. It needs to be about actively healing what's already there.

Biodiversity and the Battle for Belonging

Of course, rewilding cities isn’t just about saving bees or cooling streets. It’s also deeply personal.

As Damien Deville explains, the way people feel about where they live — whether they feel connected, rooted, part of something — shapes everything from political views to mental health to social cohesion.

Today, too many people living in rural areas or smaller towns feel excluded from the national narrative of progress. Big cities are painted as hubs of culture, modernity and success, while the countryside is often portrayed as stagnant or backward.

This divide is dangerous. And it's exacerbated by urbanisation strategies that focus investment, jobs, and imagination in just a few big metropolitan areas, leaving the rest of the country feeling abandoned.

Bringing biodiversity back into all kinds of places, not just trendy city centres, could be part of reconnecting people with their land and their community stories. It’s about making sure every territory is seen as "the centre of the world" in its own way – a powerful shift in thinking that could reshape politics and society far beyond gardens and trees.

Lessons from Rural Gardens

Sometimes, it’s the people on the margins who are leading the way.

Deville shares an example from gardens in economically precarious areas, where people have turned to small-scale agriculture to supplement incomes. These aren't manicured suburban lawns; they’re lush, productive spaces that sometimes stretch over hundreds of square metres.

Here, necessity breeds a new kind of relationship with the land. People rediscover the rhythms of growing seasons, notice the insects and reptiles that move into their plots, and learn – often unknowingly – to support local biodiversity.

One gardener, Mohamed, summed it up beautifully when he said: "A garden without lizards is like a seaside town without the sea." His words capture something profound: we only protect what we notice, what we know, what we come to love.

Changing How We Teach Nature

A big part of the solution, Deville argues, must lie in education.

Today, schools barely teach children about the landscapes they live in. Few can name the trees in their parks, the rivers that run through their towns, or the insects living in their hedgerows. We’ve become visitors in our own territories.

Deville dreams of a new kind of schooling: one that takes children out into the world, showing them volcanoes, dunes, forests, marshes – not through a textbook, but by standing among them. Learning by doing, seeing, feeling.

Because if we don’t teach young people to love their home territories, how can we expect them to care when those territories are under threat?

A Future Rooted in Place

The more we talk about rewilding cities, the clearer it becomes: this isn’t just an environmental issue. It's about belonging, identity, culture, even democracy.

If we can make private gardens part of the solution – if we can encourage a million small acts of stewardship across our cities – we might not just save the bees and cool the streets. We might also create citizens who feel proud of where they live, who see themselves as part of a larger story.

It won't happen overnight. Changing how people design their gardens, how they value wildness, how they see their place in the ecosystem — all that takes time, patience, education, and imagination.

But the seeds are already there. Maybe they’re in your own back garden, just waiting for a little love and a different way of seeing.

And maybe, if we water them well enough, they'll grow into something remarkable.

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