THE HISTORY OF PARKS

This is the first of a series of posts dedicated to my students in an ongoing teaching project. I decided to start with this topic because one of my students is an expert in park design!

The text I will be using is taken from this website:

http://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/hyde_park/history.cfm

After each paragraph I will comment on some aspects and vocabulary that I think will be of interest to my students. Comments are in blue. Although occasionally I link to some online dictionaries like wordreference, most of the definitions are based on my own knowledge. You are more than welcome to correct, discuss, challenge and generally improve them.

For my students: after reading the text, select those words which are useful for you (probably not all of them) and create your own examples. You can share them as comments here on the blog so all of you can benefit from them.

History of parks

Throughout the United Kingdom we have inherited a legacy of first class public parks and landscapes. Today, every town has a park that they can be proud of and many of these are also historically important. 

1. Throughout: over the entire extension of a place. All over.
2. Legacy: what has been left for the future. Inheritance: what has been formally inherited, valid because of a document. (That document is the Last Will and Testament).
3. Landscape: the particular shape and layout of a place, like a park or a similar unbuilt area. To landscape: to create a specific shape or layout for an unbuilt area.

The Victorians invented and shaped the concept of public parks and in turn influenced the creation of parks in North America and Europe. Recognising the need for places to relax, unwind, and to exercise, the top landscape designers of the day, like Joseph Paxton and John Claudius Loudon, were commissioned to lay out these new parks. During the mid to late nineteenth century, public park and landscape design was a hot topic and dominated professional journals and sections of newspapers just like gardening and interior design pages in today’s consumer magazines. 

1. Public parks: Parks are no necessarily public. Actually a park used to be a massive (very big) version of a garden. For example in Madrid, places like La Granja and Aranjuez, where you have a palace, and around it, what would have been called a "park" or "gardens" (in plural).
2. Unwind: relax after some stressful or tiring activity.
3. To lay out: to design the general structure of something. The structure is called layout. 
4. Hot topic: something that people debate about very frequently and often showing strong opinions.

The promoters and champions of the first public parks also saw them as a means to boost the local economy and civic pride by making towns and cities attractive places to work and live. These parks were conceived as special places where all sections of society could enter free of charge and mix freely. 

Many of the Victorian public parks were philanthropic gifts to the people of the local community by wealthy industrialists and landowners whilst others were created by public subscription. The best and most innovative park designs have proven to be remarkably robust, and throughout their history have continually adapted to meet new needs and are still cherished today by the people who use them. 

1. Wealthy: rich
2. Industrialist: owner of some industry
3. Landowner: someone who owns land (with or without buildings).
4. whilst: while, at the same time.
5. public suscription: ordinary people donated money until it was enough to buy the land and create the park.
6. remarkably: if something is remarkable, people will remark (comment) on it. 
7. to cherish: to love and value very positively.

One of the earliest public parks is the wonderful Derby Arboretum, which was a gift to the people of Derby by the textile manufacturer, Joseph Strutt. Derby was growing fast in the 1830s and Strutt set about creating an open space for the community and commissioned John Claudius Loudon, who was already a designer of repute, to create the new park. Loudon sculpted the ground to create sinuous shapes which were planted with an extensive collection of trees and on the 17th of September 1840, when Derby Arboretum was opened to the public, the whole town took the afternoon off work, all eager to enter the park for the first time. 

1. Commisioned: give an important job to do.
2. Designer of repute: a designer who has a good reputation. Can you guess what a house of ill-repute is?
3. Ground: the natural layer of the earth that we walk on. In a building we speak about floor (artificial, man-made). Ground is connected to grind, which is a process which we use with cereals, coffee and (in US English) with meat. The texture of the ground explains the word. What is ground coffee then? 

Another of the earliest public parks, Joseph Paxton’s Birkenhead Park, was part of a residential development scheme to create an attractive setting for new homes and to recoup the costs through the property sales. Flanked on all sides by handsome houses and wide tree-lined boulevards, Birkenhead Park was the inspiration for New York’s Central Park. Other public open spaces were shaped from former private landscaped gardens and many of today’s country parks are developed from such historic estates. 

1. Residential development scheme: a scheme is a system or plan for something. As a verb it has a negative meaning, it means "to plan something negative, usually against someone". Talking about buildings, a development is a compound of buildings or individual houses over a big piece of land, instead of just one house or just one building. It includes also work on infrastructure. 
2. Setting; in this context, situation, surrounding area.
3. to recoup: to recover.
4. flanked: surrounded on the flanks (sides).
5. Estate: an estate is a piece of land usually with some buildings in it. A person's or a family's estate is all that they possess (land, buildings, furniture, jewels, animals...). That is why nowadays the expression real estate is used to refer to buildings and land.

Since the nineteenth century public parks have been created by every subsequent generation with different influences and designs. The new Mile End Park, a £25million Millennium Funded project, is very much in this tradition. This exciting project united existing green spaces in London’s East End to create a magnificent large-scale park. However, due to demands on urban space - especially for commercial and residential development - the opportunities to create big new parks on the scale of previous developments are few and the Victorian parks will always be exceptional for their size. 

1. Subsequent: one after another.
2. Exciting: extremely interesting (no sexual meaning)
3. London's east end: area of London traditionally known for poverty, high density, pollution and lack of open spaces like parks.

Throughout the history of our public parks, local authorities have played an important role and have strived to provide high quality parks services. But, in the last 30 years, many parks have become neglected and suffered a worrying loss of original features, such as bandstands, fountains and boating lakes. Rather than being seen as places of pride, they increasingly became eyesores as problems such as maintenance and funding led to a gradual decline. Throughout this period many historic parks became endangered as they were perceived as being old-fashioned and not relevant to today’s society. As a result, they became targets for redevelopment and unsympathetic re-design. 

1. to strive: to make an effort 
2. to provide: to give something (e.g. a service)
3. to neglect: not to take care of something when necessary (e.g. maintenance services)
4. features: characteristics or functions

• note: "e.g."= example given (="for example"); "i.e."= "id est" (latin for "that is", introduces an explanation or clarification for something).

Through initiatives such as Heritage Lottery Funding and listing on English Heritage’s register parks and gardens of historic interest, historic designs are increasingly being re-evaluated and appreciated. The Heritage Lottery Fund has helped many local authorities restore their historic parks. This restoration has been the catalyst for the original Victorian designs to be dusted off, re-considered and brought back to their former glory. The genius of these designs enables each park to continue to evolve and adapt and to include new features for today’s park users. 

1. funding: to provide funds, i.e. money.
2. listing: to list, to add to a list. very common when talking about property, like buildings or pieces of land. In this case it refers to the list of protected monuments and landmarks. In other contexts it refers to including a house in a list of houses for sale (do you ever watch "love it or list it?")
3. increasingly: more and more each time
4. to dust off: to take off the dust, for example from furniture or other places where it has accumulated.
5. to bring back: to make something or someone return. 
6. to enable: to provide someone or something with the ability or capacity to do something. (note: check provide in previous paragraph)

Campaigns such as Britain in Bloom which is run by the Royal Horticultural Society encourages the best practice in public amenity horticulture and supports local authorities in showcasing their parks and gardens, and the skills of their parks staff. The National Flowerbed Competition at the RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park also highlights the ways in which bedding schemes can inspire and delight park visitors. 

1. In bloom: flowers are in bloom when they are about to open, usually in spring.
2. to run: usually it refers to the activity which is much faster than walking. Another very common meaning is "to manage an activity, a business or an organization". The person who does it is a manager (not a runner!).
3. amenity: amenity horticulture means growing vegetables just as a hobby, not professionally.
4. to showcase: to show something, usually a product at a public place, like a trade fair (e.g. IFEMA).
5. to highlight: to make something more visible than the rest of elements. 
6. bedding: arrangement of plants, usually flowers, in an limited area known as bed. 
7. to delight: to make people (or animals) extremely happy. e.g. the children were delighted when they saw the birthday cake.

Public parks sought to create playgrounds for the masses and to provide clean fresh air to those who were living in increasingly built-up environments. Today, the need for parks has come full circle and the value of these places for sport, recreation, art, culture, ecology and biodiversity is as just as important now in the twenty-first century as it was in the nineteenth. When building new parks and green spaces, we should be aspiring to continue this design heritage by creating parks which will stand the test of time and be equally loved by future generations. 

1. to seek: (seek, sought, sought; irregular verb) if you seek something you are looking for something or have the intention of finding it or reaching a goal or objective. 
2. playground: in schools, the free space where children play. Also to be found in parks. In this text it is used as a metaphor for public spaces where everyone (the masses) can have a good time.
3. built up: to build up means to completely cover an area with buildings, without leaving space for open spaces such as parks.
4. (to come) full circle: when a situation evolves in a way that it finishes at the same point where it started.
5. to stand the test of time: this expression means that something has the same importance, value or good reputation a long time after it was built, created or invented. If something doesn't stand the test of time it becomes obsolete.

Jenifer White, English Heritage

Martin Duffy, GreenSpace