ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the arguments for teaching landscape history in a structured manner as part of the landscape architectural curriculum, chiefly those around an historical understanding of time-depth, landscape change, conservation and connected ideas. Through this cultural transmission, the practitioner develops a sensitivity to the past and the associations attached to a place. There has, unfortunately, been a line of thinking within landscape architecture, influenced by post-war Modernism, that considers landscape history to be detrimental to a designer’s creativity. However, history is not intended to promote outdated models but to open a landscape architect’s mind to possibilities that could not have been imagined and thereby inspire. It is thus taught with care; all history is selective, and, the speaker advised, the teacher must design a course asking some critical questions – Who? Why? What? How? Whose?
