Climate and garden design in Queensland

Abstract

This paper examines some aspects of the historical processes of learning about a new environment (especially climate and life systems) that occurred in Queensland during the nineteenth and 20th centuries, from the point of view of garden designers and horticulturists. Garden historians now recognise the important influences that physical geographic factors have on design outcomes. Traditional garden history, however, has concentrated on investigations of visual form, the arrangement of landscape designs and the cultural or social influences behind design ideas. Similarly, conventional histories, written by experienced locals, focused on northern hemisphere, temperate climate gardens where regional differences were usually explained by cultural forces without adequately exploring the impact of the natural environment.

Recent Queensland research has shown that migrant gardeners' experiences of learning about their new land and climate, typically involves a three-step process of acclimatisation: firstly, observation and experimentation; secondly, adaptation and refinement; and thirdly, innovation and consolidation. Documenting and promoting this acquired gardening knowledge for warmer climates slowly developed during recent centuries. From the 1930s, some information was published internationally, but it took decades more to establish a comprehensive understanding of the limitations and possibilities of subtropical and tropical gardening. It can be argued that this learning process is still under way.