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Conference
2006
Plants as infrastructure
Abstract:
Plants
are the Infrastructure to Ecological and Cultural Integrity
COLIN
MEURK
The often bitter debate
over the types and nature of plants in our cultural landscapes demonstrates
how seriously society regards these green backdrops to our lives.
Clearly there is greater meaning attached to the form, layout and
origins of the trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants, grasses and weeds
in our cities and countrysides than most people care to admit. Large
council budgets are devoted to managing public parks and gardens
and biosecurity in our towns, and nation-wide there is enormous
input of resources into managing private lawns and other decorative
or symbolic plant associations that adorn our urban gardens. We
acknowledge that plants proscribe significant biodiversity, aesthetic,
amenity, historic and cultural value. Change is inevitable and is
increasingly (self-consciously) directed by some sectors of society
rather than occurring spontaneously. Therefore rational and inclusive
design and management steps need to be taken to accommodate the
values that different sectoral groups ascribe to plants. Without
this there will be an incoherent, even divisive and arrested culture
and a perpetuation of decisions made by colonists over a century
ago. The losers will be endemic wildlife (ecological integrity),
the global community who wish to experience an authentic New Zealand,
and ultimately New Zealand citizens who seek a mature, unique and
diverse identity as symbolised in landscape design and who recognise
the important role that plants have in knitting the infrastructure
together.
We explore a sequence
of logical steps that might inform a consultative process and subsequent
decision-making about plant structural and functional roles. We
believe that existing models of consultation do not address the
divisions of opinion, nor ecological bottom lines and merely reinforce
existing power elites and winner-take all decisions especially in
key visible locations. The steps and criteria for determining plant
priorities should include: 'pose no biosecurity risk', sustainability,
valuable/essential to wildlife, provide amenity value; then establish
appropriate site designs that relate to scale of site and other
socially-desired roles, and establish landscape designs that provide
for spatial connectivity. We finally present examplars of indigenous
and equivalent exotic structural species for different garden types
and elements.
Colin D Meurk
Landcare Research, PO Box 69, Lincoln 8152
Email: meurkc@landcareresearch.co.nz
Simon Swaffield
Lincoln University, Lincoln 8152
Email: swaffies@lincoln.ac.nz.
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