Introduction

Abstract

The view that the maintenance of civilization should include a battle against nature still has many adherents. Most planners and landscape architects take as a basic tenet that people inherently like the picturesque and given the choice would decide to live in a setting not dissimilar to eighteenth century parkland. This represents a controlled and improved aspect of nature catering for artistic and horticultural interests; indeed it has been suggested that Britain’s major contribution to the visual arts is perfecting this type of landscape. Our entire cultural background, reinforced by modern advertising, encourages us to appreciate the gardenesque approach. It is currently the accepted landscape treatment for most public open space in towns, along road corridors, in parks, cemeteries, the environs of local authority housing, industrial estates and buffer zones. Being primarily aesthetic rather than for active use there is a big design and maintenance input which includes mowing extensive areas of grass, tending shrubs, planting and replanting trees, weeding, removing dead material, sweeping leaves and giving a lot of attention to edges. The design concept is to produce a static controlled sequence of aesthetic events.