Historical landscape languages : creating symbolic space over generations

Landscape creation takes time, patience, water, and languages of visions. Landscape ‘history’ is not short in time but progressive, evolutionary and slow. In the case of the Adelaide Park Lands, the spectre of the myth of the Park Lands as a historical statement is very evident in planning and design discourses in South Australia. It is a mental creation of a number of actors who sought initially to remove all vegetation and evidence of human sedentary occupation. These actors applied languages to argue for a certain type of landscape as well as for the human, water, plant and financial resources to construct this picture. Some were simple letters to editors, some were political statements and pronouncements, some were the actual endeavours and expressions of municipal officials and city gardeners who sought to plant and craft representations of what they thought were ideal visions, and some were consultants who equally sought to apply their ideals.

This paper considers the historiography of the Adelaide Park Lands through the languages of those who argued for and enabled its planting using their words, languages and action examples.