Best laid plans and parks

12 December 2022

Welcome to 'Stray Thoughts', where the Eureka Street editorial team muses on ethical and social challenges we've noted throughout the week. In Melbourne at the end of Spring parks are often at their most beautiful. The spring growth has matured, flowering shrubs abound; lorikeets feast on the bottle brush; mallards nurse their chicks in the ponds. To walk through them in the early morning sets the news of the day and our own anxieties in a larger context. They are overshadowed by gratitude for being invited into such a beautiful world.

It is easy to imagine that the parks have been like this forever, even before the beginnings of our town. In reality, however, our parks owe their existence to human planning, their design to skilled horticulturalists who have rerouted streams and chosen each tree, and owe their maintenance to knowledgeable gardeners. Some gardens have been redesigned, each coppice planned and planted, logs from fallen trees placed appropriately, European plants and grasses replaced by native varieties, and wattles chosen to flower at different times. The vistas that come to the eye’s delight as if by chance have been carefully planned.

Parks are gifts, not only of nature but of people who have recognised how important they are for good human living and have guarded them. In the relatively early years of towns this hospitality was lavish. Later generations have been less generous in providing parks and in protecting them from encroachment. In new suburbs today it is common to see a sea of black roofs on treeless streets with no green space where people can picnic and roam.

At a time when for the survival of the earth as we know it our next generation must treasure the environment of which they are part and to appreciate the beauty and delicacy of the natural world, such neglect is disrespectful. Is it enough to provide homes in which people may live if we neglect the world of nature, our common home?

Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services. Main image: Carlton gardens. (Getty Images)

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Best laid plans and parks

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