St James Park
Heritage Advice
City of Boroondara, Places & Spaces section
Hawthorn, VIC
Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country
Ensuring future succession planting of historic avenues of elms.
GML’s landscape heritage team was engaged by the City of Boroondara’s Places & Spaces team in late 2021 to provide heritage advice that would inform future succession planting of the historic avenues of elms in St James Park, Hawthorn.
First laid out in 1861, St James Park forms an important component of the heritage of Hawthorn and the wider municipality. Like other nineteenth-century parks and gardens in metropolitan Melbourne, St James Park retains striking, but ageing, evidence of its original Victorian-era layout and planting schemes.
Recognising the imperatives associated with a changing climate, the project team combined best-practice management of heritage values with available scientific data on projected climate tolerances and ratings of selected trees.
The project’s findings fed into a community engagement process, and will inform a master plan being prepared for the park. The outcomes of GML’s heritage advice will help manage change associated with tree renewal and landscape succession without compromising the park’s heritage values and landscape character, and community enjoyment of the place.
