We compared forest gardens, or tembawang, in twoareas in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, to patches of primary forest in terms ofsuccessional stage, mode of dispersal and characteristics of human use ofnon-planted tree species. This information was acquired for 144 tree speciesinventoried in six tembawang forest gardens and two intactnatural forest patches, through interviews at the site and a survey of theliterature. In particular older tembawang were found tohave practically the same proportions of species of different successionalstages and modes of dispersal as natural forests, thus emphasising the potentialof tembawang in conserving tree species. Non-planted treespecies of tembawang and natural forests also havepractically indistinguishable spectra of human uses, indicating that themanagement of these tembawang does not significantlydiscriminate between species with certain uses. However, we also identified twoaspects that should be taken into account in considering the conservation roleof tembawang. The floras of the two study areas showedsignificant regional differentiation, implying that efficient conservation inWest Kalimantan needs to have a rather dense network. We also found that latesuccessional species and animal-dispersed species oftembawang were more commonly geographically widespread thanspecies of the same ecological characteristics found in natural forests. Thus,even if tembawang are similar to natural forests in termsof numbers of species with different ecological characteristics, the compositionof non-planted tree species in tembawang is not a randomsample from natural forest, but overrepresents species that are easily dispersedand/or established.