The prolific nature of many grass and herbaceous species in our urban parks offers an opportunity to cultivate more biodiverse and dynamic grasslands where monocultural lawn currently exists. Grass and herbaceous plants operate on different timescales to humans. This divergence has resulted in the undervaluing and regular destruction of them in our parks, but there is much to be learnt from these eager, abundant and ephemeral beings.
Grassland Tales takes place in Camperdown Memorial Rest Park in Sydneys inner west, where time spent with site – through observation and tending to the remnant grasslands that inhabit the adjacent cemetery (with a local “Friends of” group) – became integral to the design methodology. The project imagines the evolution of the park into an interconnected grassland that harbours many grassland species: ephemeral, native and spontaneous grasses are all managed and tended to in adaptive ways. Here, the landscape architect (working alongside maintenance crews, ecologists and community members) acts as a negotiator between plants and people.
In traditional practice, the landscape architecture profession is often afforded little agency with regards to the evolution of ongoing care and adaptive design methods, continually constrained as we are by contracts, clients and economics. In response, the project uses a grassroots approach, building knowledge and energy within the community through art installations and advocacy. The activites took place within the park itself, through the temporary installation of a fabric drawing, the display of cards that told the tales of individual grassland species, the distribution of leaflets (to take home) and the creation of an audio-guide for a meditative walk through the cemetery. Each encounter or tale offered alternative ways of sensing grasslands and the lively beings (plants, insects, birds, reptiles, and mycorrhizals) that inhabit them. Collectively, they encourage an embodied care for these plant communities, which – when layered with scientific knowledge and the cultural relationships that shape how we treat them – help to build a rich and complex understanding of site and all its inhabitants. The project imagines a world where design and maintenance (care) are one and the same act, with a reciprocity that extends between people and landscape.
