Reframing human–nature relationships through art

Abstract Growing numbers of people engage in forms of nature stewardship within their private gardens. Yet many ecological structures that support species in gardens, such as deadwood or stone piles, rarely appear in public green spaces, in part because they conflict with prevailing landscape design standards. Reimagining such structures as sculptures could help make them culturally legible and open new ways of imagining how cultural processes can contribute to biodiversity. That is, art in public green spaces may evoke an emotional awareness of nature as present in our midst, and thus as something that can be cared for, engaged with, and even expanded through human creativity and cultural practices. To explore this idea, we led a transdisciplinary project in which artists and biodiversity scientists co‐created sculptures designed to function as both artworks and habitats for species. Rather than presenting a finalized project, we outline our process and outcomes as an example and a starting point for how art and science can explore the role of cultural processes, not merely as pressures from which nature must be protected, but as legitimate ecological processes capable of creating more, not less, nature. There is considerable scope for artists to develop sculptures along the lines of ecologically functional, biodiversity‐supporting art, and to integrate such work into public spaces in a bid to counter our tendency to see nature as pristine, far away, and separate from humans, thereby helping to reframe human–nature relationships.