Landscape from the Heritage Study

This study has identified a number of trees and tree groups, street trees, hedges, and historical plantings where a tree or trees are the only markers of an important historic site (see Heritage Places Schedule, Appendix 1). Many of these places are contributory to the overall character of the City but are not of individual importance.

Some landscape places have been included in the detailed citations (Vol. 3), generally as supportive of a building but sometimes as individually significant specimens (see Bunya bunyas, North Road). Others, judged as potentially of local significance or as typical of their type, have not been dealt with in detail because of the study budget limitations. However, the survey stage of this study illustrated to the study team how important the mature remnant landscape is to the eastern and southern parts of the City, showing evidence of the former farm activity in the area as well as providing some aesthetic elements, as buffer zones for new residential development.

A Landscape Character and Capability Study (combining cultural, resource potential & amenity factors) would recognise broad landscape areas and specific elements such as the ubiquitous Monterey pine and Monterey cypress rows which have been used by farmers since the nineteenth-century to protect crops or orchards. Such a study may also identify further specimen trees of horticultural, aesthetic or heritage value, particularly in the western part of the City outside the present study area, to provide a detailed management tool for the landscapes possessed by the City. This tool should then be used as a matter of Council policy in the development of cell plans for the area and its findings adhered to in the statutory implementation of these plans.

Recommendations

• investigate the feasibility of a Landscape Character Study, using the work done to date;
• carry out a significant tree survey in the western part of the City (outside this study area) and incorporate the findings in the planning scheme and planning policy;
• adopt an interim policy to protection mature Monterey pine and Monterey cypress rows where these rows provide evidence of previous farming activity and are of potential historical and aesthetic importance to the City.