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FEATURE

Trek Memorial Garden at the Voortrekker planning, analysis or grading of our natural, variety of landscape heritage subjects:
Monument. This allegedly happened as agricultural, silvicultural, horticultural or https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0
the result of a misunderstanding, but the landscape architectural landscapes. It Presently, The Landscape Map is
reality is that the heritage consultant and simply does not exist. focussing on our agricultural, indigenous
managers failed to recognise or assign This is why LHSA is focussing on and vernacular landscape heritage, creating
sufficient significance to the trees and the fundamental task of mapping and a much-needed online resource about our
plants that were so carefully collected to inventorying South Africa’s extensive many amazing, indigenous peoples and
commemorate the landscapes traversed landscape heritage. We have also adopted places, histories and migrations. We hope
during the Great Trek. They were simply the approach of making this mapping to be starting LHSA tours for the various
chopped down for a path. publically available on every mobile device, aspects of the mapped landscape in due
A further landscape heritage disaster using Google Maps as the backbone of our course.
came to light at the IERM Convention, when ambitious mapping scheme. By using the For more information visit
Johannesburg City Parks & Zoo (JCPZ) link below, you can access The Landscape https://landscape-heritage-sa.yolasite.com/
presented the problem of Polyphagous Map (aka LHSA Test Map) and view the and support or join us by becoming a
Shot Hole Borer (PSHB), a beetle destroying map points, areas and entries on a wide member, sponsor or patron. n
the world’s biggest urban forest,
namely the street trees and gardens
of Johannesburg and Pretoria. The
incoming president of JCPZ, Dr Elise
van Staden, wrote her PhD thesis on
this urban forest and estimates that
75% of the Jacarandas and London
Planes that make up these historic
landscapes, will soon be lost.
We cannot always stop disasters
from happening but the need to
promote landscape heritage in its
own right is quite evident. Squalid
urban environments are just a part
of the problem, and our fantastic
natural and agricultural landscapes
are not being recognised and
conserved. There is no national

Stellenbosch area, private gardens layer

Cape Town area, all ten landscape layers
Text and photos supplied by Bruce Eitzen. Mobile Google Maps screenshot of the peninsula with all landscape layers

Landscape SA • Issue 120 2022 17