Home to diverse life and microbes
An urban ecosystem alive with pollinators and soil organisms
Urban farms become nodes in the city's ecological network — home to pollinators like bees and the microbes in the soil. Small patches of green stitch together habitat for living things.
335 related cases
Cases where this shows up
Metta Garden & Eco Garden by ECO-V (Eco Friendly Volunteers), near Colombo
LKColombo (southern suburbs), Sri Lanka
A small patch of degraded wasteland used as a dumping ground, regenerated from 2013 by the environmental NGO ECO-V. Soil was rebuilt by composting organic waste, and the site was divided into two zones — an 'Eco Garden' urban forest and a 'Metta Garden' for pollinators and insects — combining a butterfly garden of native host plants with organic vegetable beds.
iucn.org
Otemachi Farm (Toyama Civic Plaza Rooftop)
JPToyama, Toyama, Japan
An urban farm running beekeeping and growing of sweet potatoes and edamame on the Toyama Civic Plaza rooftop since 2018. It serves as a food-education and awareness space focused on pollinators and the urban environment.
siminplaza.co.jp
Marunouchi Honey Project (Rooftop Urban Beekeeping)
JPChiyoda, Tokyo, Japan
An urban-beekeeping project by Mitsubishi Estate and the Ecozzeria Association on rooftops in the Otemachi-Marunouchi district. Area workers join beekeeping, honey harvesting and forage planting, with the honey circulating back into the district — a worker-participation model of rooftop food/biodiversity town-making.
ecozzeria.jp+2
Pelguaed Community Garden (Tallinn)
EETallinn (Põhja-Tallinn), Estonia
Tallinn's largest and best-equipped citizen garden, at the corner of Kolde pst and Ehte tn on the Putukaväil (Pollinator Highway) green corridor in North Tallinn. Built out in spring 2024 on the foundation of a smaller garden that had run on the same site for five years, it offers raised beds, individual plots, a greenhouse and fruit trees. Its stated aim is to give city dwellers the joy of collective gardening while strengthening environmental awareness and a sense of community.
tallinn.ee+2
Land of Dreams Urban Farm & Cultural Centre (Calgary, Canada)
CACalgary, Canada
A 30-acre urban farm on public land in southeast Calgary, formerly a construction site. Run by the settlement agency CCIS, it teaches newcomers to Canada how to grow food in southern Alberta's climate. Guided by Blackfoot Elder Herman Many Guns, its programming acknowledges the site as Treaty 7 territory. Soil restoration, biodiversity, composting, honey production and pollinator stewardship are central.
youngagrarians.org+2
Brooklyn Grange
USNew York, United States
A pioneering for-profit rooftop soil farm operating across several NYC buildings, balancing commercial production with education and community, and widely cited as a model for urban rooftop agriculture.
brooklyngrangefarm.com
Supporting research
The role of green roofs as urban habitats for biodiversity modulated by their design: a review
A review synthesizing existing research on how far green roofs can support urban biodiversity, framed by their design and modes of use. It finds green roofs can provide habitat for soil organisms and pollinators as well as plants, but that the effect depends strongly on design such as substrate depth and vegetation diversity, and recommends integrating soil communities into construction guidelines and increasing heterogeneity at roof and landscape scales.
Coulibaly S.F.M., Aubry C., Provent F. et al. · 2023 · Environmental Research Letters, 18(7)
Straw cover increases garden soil microbial biodiversity
This project examined how straw cover affects the soil microbiome of a community garden, using EcoPlate carbon-source utilization analysis and 16S rRNA sequencing on samples from the Erie Street GrowLocal community garden in Lafayette, Indiana. Straw cover increased soil moisture content and significantly increased bacterial alpha diversity, with a shift toward carbohydrate preference, though beta diversity showed no difference between conditions. The authors conclude that straw coverage can improve soil microbial biodiversity and moisture, potentially benefiting yields and food quality for communities.
Emory Walker, Mara Welty, Emma Creviston et al. · 2025 · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems
Complementary analyses of soil microbial and chemical properties and human observation on augmented ecosystems in urban environment
This study achieved high biodiversity (over 200 plant species) on an urban rooftop garden using the Synecoculture method and analyzed soil microbial diversity, activity, and chemical properties over two years. Soil microbes gradually increased in diversity and activity after installation, showing a positive correlation with cation exchange capacity. After two years of continuous practice, human subjective evaluations were qualitatively consistent with objective data, suggesting that trained human subjectivity could be incorporated as part of assessment proxies in future ecosystem management research.
Kousaku Ohta, Masatoshi Funabashi · 2021 · Measurement Sensors
The potential use of behavioural bioassays as a first-tier approach for screening urban soil biodiversity: a pilot study
This pilot study investigated the use of behavioral bioassays as screening indicators for invertebrate and bacterial biodiversity in three urban soils in Europe. While model organisms' behavioral responses consistently aligned with reductions in invertebrate biodiversity, these changes did not emerge from microbial analysis. The findings support behavioral bioassays combined with faunal diversity assessments as a first-tier screening tool for urban soil health, but suggest further investigation is needed for links with microbial diversity.
Lorenzo Federico, Valeria Tatangelo, Francesca Pittino et al. · 2026 · Urban Ecosystems