The church garden as an element improving the quality of city life – A case study in Warsaw.

• Warsaw church gardens are part of small urban green spaces structure and promote ecological benefits. • Church gardens provide the convenient environment for the individual worship and restoration. • Church gardens host both the religious and the liturgical events. • Bigger absolute green space surface and presence of trees favors social events. The subject of the paper are gardens associated with the Roman Catholic parish churches of the Warsaw Archdiocese. Church gardens derive from tradition of former churchyards which are principally characterized as places of burial. With passing years churchyards have lost their function of burial place and were transformed into designed green areas. The church gardens scattered throughout the urban tissue may constitute significant part of urban green spaces. Despite their fairly small size, the church gardens can function as a compliment to larger public green spaces. The research aims to verify how the church gardens of the Warsaw Archdiocese contribute to urban residents' quality of life improvement. The data collection, by means of on-site study, included identification of garden layout, types of vegetation, symbolical elements, furniture and other architectonic elements. To identify each church lot size and the surface covered by green space within respective church lot the orthophotomaps were used. Information on social functions of the gardens was acquired from the parish websites and their profiles in the social media (Facebook), and was supplemented by on-site observations carried out in the gardens. The size of the church gardens is diverse, but the majority of them has at least a small-size green space. The gardens which host social events are larger and have larger green space surface but do not differ with respect to the percentage of the green space surface. Social events take place more frequently in gardens with woody plants. Bigger absolute green space surface and presence of trees favors social events. The results show that Warsaw Archdiocese church gardens constitute important part of small urban green spaces structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]