Patchwork Plains

Stitching back together Melbourne’s remnant native grasslands to increase the attachment between the city and its site.

Sebastian Cocks

Design Research Major Project

Master of Landscape Architecture

2022

Despite the Victorian Volcanic Plain being one of only 15 biodiversity hotspots in Australia, the natural temperate grasslands that once dominated the plain have been reduced to less than 1% of their pre-1788 area. This ecological decimation is due to the ignorant agricultural practices and short-sighted urbanization that followed European arrival. The result is a sprawling city, Melbourne, that manifests little connection to the earlier landscape conditions of its underlying site.  

Patchwork Plains aims to reintegrate our native grasslands into the city by reconnecting surviving remnant patches using ecological corridors.A large-scale network of connections across Melbourne’s western suburbs is informed by a detailed corridor design for the Jones Creek Grassland Circuit in St Albans. The project attempts to reconcile the eco-socialist need to restore the site’s pre-colonial grassland ecology with the eco-modernist reality that Melbourne’s development has changed the site irrevocably.

By increasing the prevalence of the grasslands in the suburbs, a new suburban identity may be developed that increases human empathy for the ecology, and generates a more ecologically and aesthetically diverse suburban fabric.

Patchwork Plains approaches grassland connection through three lenses: the emotional, the temporal and the spatial. Emotional connection is the connection of grasslands to and through their surrounding human community; explored through the creation of educational opportunities, increased human-grassland interactions, and new visual identities. Temporality is explored by embedding grassland genetic stock into the suburban environment. Converting existing anthropocentric suburban space to grassland-dominated space will spatially reconnect the remnants. Thus, grassland corridors may form that integrate the ecology holistically into our modern suburban framework, increasing the attachment between the city and its site.

* This project uses the term ‘Melbourne’ when naming this location because it refers to the city - a colonial construct.

** ‘Naarm’ is the Woi Wurrung term- and thus true name - for this geographical area (in written Roman alphabet).