Introduction to environmental horticulture: issues and future.
This chapter attempts to put environmental horticulture into context. What are the core values of this discipline? Where does it come from? Where does its future lie? The expression ‘environmental horticulture’ first begins to appear in the literature and educational course terminology in the 1980s, particularly in North America. It is gradually adopted as a term for the subset of horticulture that is concerned with the use and management of plants in public and semi-public environments. In some parts of the world it replaces the term ‘urban horticulture’, although in many cases these descriptors co-exist for long periods of time, and in essence cover the same territory. In the UK, the words ‘environmental’ and ‘urban’ never really catch on as course descriptors, with the much older term ‘amenity horticulture’ tending to persist right up to the present day. These days in North America and elsewhere, ‘landscape horticulture’ is often the preferred term used to cover the planting and maintenance of landscape plants in public or private space. At one level these terms are just about marketing and branding, trying to present a modern, culturally responsive face to compete in the educational marketplace for students. At another level these newer names signify changing ideas within this branch of horticulture. In the UK the term ‘amenity horticulture’ first emerges in the 1970s to denote the horticulture that is concerned with public and semi-public landscape spaces, as opposed to various forms of crop production. This particular term develops at the same time as recreation and leisure management and reflects a view of the world where this strand of horticulture exists to provide leisure or amenity benefits to citizens through the cultivation of plants in public landscapes (largely urban) visited by the public. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed substantial changes in how horticulture interacted with plants in public spaces. The emergence of landscape architecture as the dominant design discipline in public spaces greatly reduced the role of horticulturalists in plant use decisions, particularly on new build, or other capital intensive projects. There were also significant changes within, for example, local authority parks departments, which led to a diminution of horticultural ambition and capacity. The first of these changes in the UK were a result of the Bains report (1972) which identified just how inefficient the delivery of many local authority services were, including parks. This led to experimentation with new forms of service delivery that has continued because of changing political philosophies, up to the present day (Byrne, 1994). The first of these was the shift from the standard day Introduction to Environmental Horticulture: Issues and Future