By Ben Stallings |

This 2015 study by Naomi Van der Velden mobilized citizen scientists from around the UK to compare the productivity of highly diverse garden beds to less diverse ones. The results suffer from small sample size (n=50 to start, but only 24 completed the trial): no statistically significant difference between the two groups. Participants felt that the more diverse plots were harder to tend and had more damage from pests and disease than the less diverse plots.