The perceived function of a campus Ecogarden to conserve biodiversity and serve as a tool in education for sustainability

An Ecogarden has been recently renovated in the campus of the Education University of Hong Kong, aiming at enhancing the biodiversity conservation function of the campus, as well as, promoting the education for sustainability in the university. Prior to the renovation of the Ecogarden, a qualitative survey has been conducted to reveal the understanding of different stakeholders in establishing Ecogarden on the concepts of biodiversity and its relationship to the function of Ecogarden. Semi-structured interviews have been conducted for three stakeholder groups, namely designers, educators and students (both environmental and non-environmental subject-related). The results indicated that their understanding of biodiversity concept is not good, neither the concept of ecosystem functioning. However, all of them ascertained the role of Ecogarden to conserve the biodiversity on campus (scientific value) and its education values, while the provisional (product-producing) value in biodiversity is the least. This study forms important baseline information for designing educational activities associating with Ecogarden, or other facility with similar nature, to advocate the biodiversity conservation in the community. Copyright © 2017 The 6th AZEC & 33rd ASET Joint International Conference.