Landscape Architecture and Agriculture - Landscape Journal

Landscape Architecture and Agriculture: Common Seeds and Diverging Sprigs in Israeli Practice

ABSTRACT This paper explores the intricate relationship between landscape architecture and agriculture, especially in Israel, where the special role of agriculture and agriculturalists in the emergence of the modern state makes this case unique. While landscape architecture and agriculture were bound together during the ﬁrst years of the Zionist project (the late 19th century), later they diverged. Currently the resurgence of the symbolic agricultural landscape at Israeli sites of national signiﬁcance, in city squares, gardens, and interchanges, is unique in its extent. The paper argues that, generally, with the disappearance of the working agricultural landscape agricultural patterns and plants have returned to the vocabulary of landscape architects in varying scales and modes of expression, from national and regional planning to landscape typologies. Thus agricultural landscapes have become the “contemporary picturesque”—objects of nostalgic yearning, a means of recovering a sense of place, and a reaction to the current global environmental crisis. The hegemonic state promotes an agricultural image in Israel’s landscape architecture as a “museal” artifact while the actual economic and social roles of agricultural practice are diminishing. Agricultural landscape presented in such “golden cages,” however, threatens the preservation of less “heroic” agricultural landscapes. And so, in fact, there seems to be an emerging need for nurturing these living landscapes as agri-culture and not solely agri-business. KEYWORDS acriculture, symbolic landscape, Israel, landscape architecture

INTRODUCTION

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ourists arriving in Israel today need not leave its newly built airport to experience the agricultural landscape once covering most of the country and serving as a source of national pride. In his ASLA prizewinning garden of 2005, landscape architect Shlomo Aronson brought that landscape to the entrance of the airport, planting a palm grove, a citrus orchard, a wheat field, and an olive grove1 (Figure 1). Leaving the airport, visitors encounter a dense orange orchard planted at an interchange. Having once produced a substantial crop, citrus groves have disappeared from Israel’s coastal plain—but they have returned as a decorative landscape typology. The agricultural landscape of today is a symbol of Israel-ness. Planted in the country’s gate, it serves as Israel’s symbolic national landscape, analogous to the tropical exuberance of orchid gardens in Singapore’s international airport.

Aronson’s museum-like garden exemplifies the blossoming of the agricultural landscape in the contemporary canon of Israel’s landscape architecture, sharply contrasting with that of the earlier modern period when local practice, as in other modern countries, distinguished itself from agriculture and aspired to build a distinct professional community. Israel, however, is unique because of agriculture’s special role in the Zionist ethos and state building. Adopting Denis Cosgrove’s interpretation of symbolic landscapes (Cosgrove 1998), this paper focuses on agriculture and landscape architecture in Israel as two modes of cultural production. While spotlighting Israel, it also places the phenomenon of symbolic landscape in a broader, global context. It argues that though both practices—agriculture and landscape architecture— were rooted in the same soil, their paths diverged with the modernization of agriculture. While agriculture disappeared from everyday landscapes, more recently it has made a comeback as part of the designers’ trove— as nostalgia, as the search for a sense of place, as a revival of sustainable systems. Based on archival research, the examination of case studies, interviews with practitioners, and literature review, this paper discusses the planned or designed landscape, mainly by landscape architects, on the national, regional, and detailed design scales, related to agriculture as a landscape typology. The paper does not cover the migration of distinct plants from agricultural fields and groves to gardens and squares but rather adopts the agricultural landscape as a typology: bustan,2 agricultural terrace, wheat field, and orchard. Part A presents this broader perspective of the ways in which modern landscape architecture has related to agriculture during the early 20th century and, subsequently, during the contemporary era. Part B emphasizes the uniqueness of Israel landscape architecture during these two periods and makes brief comparative references to global examples.

Landscape Journal 28:2–09 ISSN 0277-2426 © 2009 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

Tal Alon- Mozes

Figure 1. Ben Gurion airport, 2004, Sholomo Aronson, Aronson Archive.

A. AGRICULTURE AND LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE: COMMON SEEDS Landscape architecture, especially garden making, is grounded in agricultural practice as the basis of land patterns, plant materials, technology, and values. Some of the iconic world gardens—the Patio de la Naranja (Cordóba, Spain, 10th century), the contemporary evocation of a renaissance garden at Villandry (Loire Valley, France, 16th century), and the Italian villas and gardens as depicted in the lunettes of Giusto Utens3—have included agricultural characteristics. John Dixon Hunt, in his seminal book Greater Perfections (2000), examines the agricultural landscape and the garden as part of the relationship between the first, second, and third natures. Invoking Bartolomeo Taegio and Jacopo Bonfadio, Hunt emphasizes the distinction between the second and third natures, between agriculture or urban settlement and garden making. The latter involves specific intentions of the creator and the consumer, elaboration of formal elements beyond functional needs, a combination of metaphysical experience, and a desire or need to make a place beautiful (Hunt 2000, 62). The gradual passage, temporal or spatial, between the three natures may be interpreted as a model of their relationship. During the modern era (late 19th century / early 20th century), agriculture gained a special role as an element of urban and social reform. Ebenezer Howard (1850–1928) celebrated the “marriage of town and country” in his productive model of the garden city

according to which 2,000 farmers farming 1,000 acres could grow sufficient fresh produce to meet the needs of 30,000 urban inhabitants (Fishman 1988, 44). In parallel, Leberecht Migge advocated the small utility garden for promoting social and economic reform in the Weimar Republic of Germany (Haney 2007). Le Corbusier echoed these ideas in his 1923 book Towards an Architecture, in which he allocated 150 square meters to each resident of the “Honeycomb” garden city for industrialized farming (Le Corbusier 2007, 276–277). Christopher Tunnard adopted this model and integrated traditional English allotments with dense high-rise housing complexes (Tunnard 1938, 157). These ideas made their way to America and especially influenced the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, who proposed the incorporation of agricultural plots in Broadacre City in 1935 (Fishman 1988, 92). Most of these schemes remained on paper. The garden-city idea was barely realized in the 20th century, and with the exception of a short period in post-WWII Germany and Israel, these authors’ ideas were only partially implemented.4 The failure of urban utopists to integrate agricultural practices into their schemes stemmed from their inability to grasp the significance of agriculture as a cultural and economic mode of production based on rationality, efficiency, high technological standards, specialization, and universality. If agriculture must be economically viable, these principles could not be practiced in one’s backyard or adjacent block. Moreover, modernity idealized the separation between

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leisure and work, private and public, culture and nature. Within such a binary opposition, agriculture was relegated to the category of work—associated with sweat, manufacturing, the working class, efficiency, and productivity—and the garden occupied the opposite end of the scale. As a leisure occupation for the bourgeoisie, the garden concealed all signs of effort, sweat or dirt, offering instead the swimming pool, patio, and barbecue (Girling and Helphand 1994). These diverging processes contributed to the disappearance of agricultural practices, images, and plant repertoire in most of the professional landscape architectural practice of the mid-20th century. Coincidentally, agriculture became agribusiness, characterized by the replacement of regional agricultural characteristics and distinctive farmsteads by a flattened topography suited to highly mechanized production and mono-cultivation. Ironically, the disappearance of the familiar agricultural landscape became a core reason for its return as a landscape of yearning,5 a symbolic practice, an image, and consequently a topic of planning and design proposals. Corner and MacLean in their Taking Measures across the American Landscape (1996) presented the allure of agricultural landscapes as abstract works of art from a bird’s-eye view while challenging the traditional picturesque aesthetic (Harrington 2006; Carlson 1985).

Agriculture in Landscape Architecture: Global Themes Nostalgia, sense of place, and sense of time. The yearning for the rural past occurs across the Western hemisphere. The past, although a foreign country as argued David Lowenthal, is a beloved one (Lowenthal 1985; Corbin 2002). It is manifested in heritage villages such Williamsburg, Virginia; Holasovice, Czech Republic; and the Minkov orchard in central Israel, where traditional agriculture delights enthusiastic children and nostalgia-obsessed folks. Nostalgia is not only a vehicle for preservation but also a motivation for new designs such as Bernard Huet’s

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1994 design for Paris’s Bercy Park. Located in what was previously a village known for its barrel industry, the carefully designed park celebrates memory: “The park is a threshold that bridges the pre-Haussmann era past to the present” (Shoaf 2007, 33). It preserves some remnants of the past and presents new amenities such as a vineyard and a small vegetable patch referring to local region’s history.

Regional identity. Preserving the agricultural landscape reinforces regional identity. Landscape architect Terry Harkness expressed his deep affection for the Illinois agricultural landscape in his proposal for a mountain foothill observatory: “An orchard agrarian prototype provides a comparative frame between the surrounding sea of speculative tract development and the landscape observatory itself. Suburban development, the reconstruction of the vanished citrus culture, and the interpretive park coexist so that one can compare past, present, and future histories” (Harkness 1986, 42). Sustainable landscapes. Urban agriculture as a mode of sustainable landscape and a critique of modern landscape design has existed in Europe and the United States for generations. Landscape architects adopted this approach, following environmental artists who, from the early 1970s, brought the agricultural practice into cities.9 Achva Benzinberg Stein and Norman Millar suggested, in the 1998 Eco-Revelatory Design exhibition, the integration of urban agricultural open spaces in inner cities (Stein and Millar 1998, 10). Louise Mozingo and her students suggested in the same exhibition planting orchards within the framework of a community project (Mozingo et al. 1998). Critique of modern landscape design as a passive arena. Community activities in urban agricultural plots (pupils practicing agriculture in Bercy Park in the center of Paris, for instance) are part of a global trend critical of modern landscape architecture as anonymous, standardized, unseen, and lacking in regional or human

character and involvement. Bringing agricultural practice to these gardens is both a critique and an alternative strategy for contemporary practice. Given these historical and contemporary contexts, the Israeli case study is of special interest because of the unique role of Hebrew / Israeli agriculture as a cultural, social, and economic mode of production. B. AGRICULTURE, IDEOLOGY AND MODERN ISRAEL Jewish settlement in Palestine was carried out within the framework of an ideology that posited a mystical link between the Jewish settlers and the land (Kamen 1991, 117).

Modern Zionist ideology has aspired to normalize the Jewish nation, to return the Jewish urban population to its ancestral land and reverse the common occupational pyramid of the Jews, and to make them agriculturalists like their biblical ancestors or agents of agricultural modernity.6 The agricultural landscape has been perceived as a symbol of personal and national redemption connecting the nation’s past to its future. Since the late 19th century, thousands of Jewish immigrants have come to Palestine and established new agricultural settlements. They arrived in a largely impoverished country with limited agricultural infrastructure, populated by Palestinian farmers who practiced only subsistence agriculture (Kamen 1991). The agricultural revolution of the Jewish immigrants was based on romantic worldviews, as well as on an ideology favoring agriculture over other models of development (Tal 2007, 228). This view influenced the development of the country and its landscape. It directed most of the financial means to agricultural development and helped to shape Tel Aviv, the first Hebrew town, as a garden city based on Ebenezer Howard’s ideas. These two elements—the preference for the agricultural landscape and the privileging of agriculturalists—were crucial in the emergence of the Zionist national identity in Palestine and are enduring symbols of that pioneer period. In practice, they have influenced

the evolving and current profession of landscape architecture in Israel.

Common Seeds and Diverging Sprigs During the establishment of the Zionist settlement of Israel, there was no clear distinction between agriculture and gardening. The first garden planners of the new Jewish settlements in Palestine were the agricultural advisors and instructors sent by the philanthropist Baron Rothschild, who arrived in Palestine in the late 19th century and established and supported a dozen agricultural settlements across country. The advisors were graduates of agricultural schools, experts in plant acclimatization, experienced in working in Mediterranean and Asian countries. They planted public boulevards and parks in the Hebrew settlements and introduced many utilitarian and ornamental plants into the local landscape (Ahranson 1990). In 1870, parallel to the establishment of the first agricultural settlement and so as to train the local population to practice agricultural work, the Alliance Israelite Universelle established Mikve Israel, the first agricultural school in Palestine. Four of its first 12 pupils specialized in gardening (Ben-Arav 1981, 16), and others adapted decorative plants for various purposes, including a perfume industry. The beautifully planted schoolyard included a nursery that became a local tourist attraction for the nearby community. At the end of the 1920s, landscape architect Yehiel Segal (1886–1962) and botanist Otto Warburg created within the schoolyard a garden serving both recreational and educational purposes. The turning point occurred in the early 1920s, when specialists in decorative gardening arrived from Europe, especially from Germany. They had acquired professional education in various institutions such as the Israelitische Gartenbauschule in Ahlem, (established 1893),7 an agricultural vocational school for young eastern European Jews. By 1932, more than 400 adolescents had completed their studies at Ahlem; 36 of them immigrated to Palestine (Enis 1998). During the 1920s, seven

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Figure 2. Garden’s scheme for small urban farm, Beit Shearim, 1947, Shlomo Oren-Weinberg, Oren-Weinberg Archive, Kibbutz Yagur.

Ahlem graduates worked in ornamental gardening in Palestine, while others cultivated orchards. They had a marked influence on the public domain. Segal was the first gardener architect (as he defined his profession) of Tel-Aviv municipality and a planner of many agricultural settlements (kibbutzim). Shlomo Oren Weinberg (1891–1955) taught at Mikve Israel and other institutions and designed kibbutzim and institutional landscapes. Notwithstanding their agricultural background and work for agricultural communities, these pioneer landscape architects struggled to create a professional community. Its members criticized the involvement of the agriculturalists in their work, especially their misunderstanding of garden design. Familiar with the contemporary European literature, they preferred the German architectonic garden style to the utility gardens of Migge (Alon-Mozes 2004).

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Segal and Weinberg’s planning and design strategy for the public open spaces of the kibbutzim demonstrated one pattern of divergence. Although these settlements based their economies on agriculture, strict zoning criteria prevented the integration of the utility sector with the public one (Enis and Ben-Arav 1994). The domestic sphere was the only one in which the pioneer group encouraged the integration of agriculture and decorative gardening. Oren Weinberg created dozens of schemes for small urban farms and semi-urban neighborhoods (Figure 2). This model was also common in many of the schemes for private dwellings in Tel Aviv. In 1924, Segal designed a garden for the home of Hayyim Nahman Bialik, the national poet, in the center of the town, with fruit trees and a chicken coop (never built). As the national poet, Bialik imbued his garden, a model for the future development of the town, with deep symbolic meaning (Alon-Mozes and Amir 2002). Particularly impressive was the comprehensive plan of Patrick Geddes for Tel Aviv (1925), which integrated orchards and vegetable gardens into various levels of city planning. Geddes advocated Tel Aviv as a city of fruit trees: To unite fundamental economic efficiency with supreme ethical idealism—this surely, of all characteristics of Jewish culture, is one of the most distinguished. . . . Tel Aviv assuredly may be—assuredly will be—living and contemporary evidence of this harmony of thought and action. And . . . how better to begin than by spreading over the whole city a verdant and expanding banner, fruit-emblazoned in purple and gold. (Geddes 1925)

Agricultural Landscape and Landscape Architecture in Israel: From Modern to Postmodern Landscape The prioritization of agriculture in the early 20th century resulted in Jewish agriculture being highly mechanized, modernized, and based on advanced local research. With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the removal of British Mandate restrictions on Jewish settlement, cultivated land area increased by 150

percent within five years, and agricultural settlements doubled in number, from 300 to 600. National building laws defined “agricultural usage” as a default for open spaces, and roughly a quarter of Israel’s land was utilized for agricultural production (Tal 2007, 235–237). The first Israeli national master plan, prepared in 1965, emphasized the importance of agricultural land use. Unlike the period before the establishment of the State, when most of the agricultural land was privately owned and consisted of relatively small plots, in the mid-1960s large areas belonging to the State were cultivated by cooperative agricultural settlements (kibbutzim and moshavim). As a result, the economic role of small urban farms diminished, and they gradually disappeared from the landscape, making room for more urban development. The separation of the urban sphere from the agricultural became increasingly more evident. Landscape architecture, in accordance with international trends, became less allied to agriculture. Although some of the leaders of the second generation of landscape architects active from the 1970s—Gideon Sarig, Shaul Amir, Dan Zur, Zvi Dekel, and Arie Dvir— were graduates of agricultural colleges outside of Israel, they moved away from their rural backgrounds. They practiced mainly in the urban sphere, in the residential and public areas of the kibbutzim, and only minimally at the regional planning level. Since the 1980s, the economic role of Israeli agriculture has become less lucrative and prestigious for a variety of reasons (Tal 2007). Previous processes were accelerated and, because of the preference for agribusiness over family farming, agricultural practice was marginalized. The master plans of the mid-1990s view agricultural land as a part of the State’s open spaces, changing the focus from landscapes of agricultural production to the provision of environmental and social services (Kaplan, Lissovsky, and Amdur 2002). Regarding these landscapes as open spaces for diverse purposes on the one hand and perceiving them as a source of inspiration on the other, the country’s “genius loci” (Helphand 2002, 98–100) opened the way for landscape

architects to return the agricultural landscape to the forefront of design.

The Broader Scale: The Image of the Country Contemporary Israeli landscape architecture relates to the agricultural landscape in diverse scales and ways. At the national and regional scales, landscape planners advocate the preservation of agricultural lands as manifestations of the local cultural landscapes. This work follows recent global attempts to include agricultural landscapes under the preservation frameworks of the National Park Service in the United States and in parallel local codes globally (Alanen and Melnick 2000; Keller and Keller 2003). In Europe, such landscapes are integrated in development projects for the benefit of their visual qualities and their potential as productive future landscapes accessible to the public (Roncken 2006). Landscape architect Shlomo Aronson was among the five editors of the current National Master Plan of Israel (TAMA 35), approved by the government in 2005 and intended to direct the development of the country until 2020. Among the plan’s goals are the preservation of the agricultural landscape for future generations and the protection of its natural, agricultural, scenic, and heritage values. The plan defines dozens of landscape clusters—products of the integration of natural and manmade landscapes—highly sensitive to the preservation of those values (TAMA 35). When preparing the plan, Aronson emphasized the importance of preserving agricultural landscapes, not only for their cultural and visual values but also as a peaceful, neutral background to future development of the country (Aronson 2000). Not surprisingly, his detailed design manifests this claim on several scales. Other landscape architects became involved in an intensive survey of the local agricultural landscape, its typologies, and potential modes of preservation (Kaplan, Lissovsky and Amdur 2002). Some broad-scale plans for metropolitan or national parks incorporated the conclusions of these studies. Shlomo Aronson

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Figure 3. Plantings along Highway 6, 2005, photographed by the author.

advocated the preservation of orchards within Beit Guvrin National Park, and Aliza Braudo is currently looking for mechanisms to preserve the agricultural belt around Haifa within Kishon (metropolitan) Park. Within this framework, development along the Cross-Israel Highway is worth noticing as it brings the agricultural landscape—plants and formal arrangements—to the margins of the traveled way and within the road’s development area. Olive orchards dominate interchanges, and rows of cactus now lie perpendicular to the drainage ditches (Figure 3). As infrastructure covers more and more of Israel’s open spaces, the preservation of agricultural landscapes within these corridors increases the opportunity of passersby to experience them.8 While these strategies of preserving the broad agricultural landscapes are also common in other countries, the Israeli case study is unique in its adoption of agricultural typologies as part of the repertoire of gardens and parks design. These include both the old typologies connected to traditional agricultural practice from the time of the patriarchs and the new typologies characterizing the Zionist project.

Old Typologies and Their Contemporary Materialization The bustan. Descriptions of the bustan appear in the Bible, especially in Song of Songs; thus it is a familiar image of the “Land of Israel” in the minds of Diaspora Jews. In practice during the late 19th century, the bustan was representative of the widespread Palestinian garden and of the country’s agricultural production. 172


As a garden type, the bustan has taken different physical forms in different times and places. Aliza Braudo defined it as a relatively small-walled utility garden and a social gathering place (Braudo 1983). The bustan contains planted fruit trees, scented shrubs, vegetables, and herbs growing together in an agricultural order. Planting is defined by beds, hedges, or open canals flowing from an irrigation pool. Constant watering is required because of the dry Mediterranean climate. The bustan is popular in the Mediterranean basin countries, including Andalusian Spain. The Zionist settlers of Palestine developed a complex attitude toward the bustan, adopting the concept of the utility garden and its planting repertoire but rejecting its spatial dimensions. Pioneer landscape architects, except for Segal in his scheme for an Arab dignitary’s garden near Tel Aviv, excluded the bustan from their design repertoire. Aliza Braudo argues that the Zionist establishment rejected the bustan as a garden typology for political and cultural reasons. More than any other garden type, the bustan was connected to the Arab-Palestinian culture from which the Zionist project wished to separate itself. The model remained controversial until the late 1980s, as was discussed in the 1988 Technion symposium on the character of the Israeli garden. Artistic interest in the bustan during the 1970s paved the way to its use in mainstream design. Sculptor Yitzhak Danziger explored the agricultural systems of the Palestinian villages and with the architectural students of the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology—

Figure 4. Vadi Siach, Haifa, 1987, Greenstein Hargil, Greenstein Har-Gil archive.

reclaimed the canals of the bustan in Wadi Siach on the slope of Mount Carmel. Later, the project became a source of inspiration for his art (Danziger 1982). In 1987, landscape architects Dafna Greenstein and Gil Har–Gil proposed the rehabilitation of this bustan, but the project was never realized because of municipal development priorities related to the site and its contested history and cultural background (Figure 4). Today a group of local environmental activists voluntarily maintains the site as a community garden. Braudo and Ruth Maoz’s 1990s design of the Rehovot winery garden was modeled on the bustan. The remaining walls of the 1923 winery and its concrete storage tanks were the inspiration for juxtaposing Hebrew and Palestinian cultures. While the interiors of the tanks serve as exhibition spaces for the Zionist wine industry, the minimalist garden within the walls modestly honors the Palestinian bustan. A group of planted palm trees graces the paved yard; a narrow stream of water is intended to resemble the irrigation ditches (Figure 5). TEAM SUD incorporated a completely different version of the bustan into its competition proposal for the top of the Hiriya landfill. In this scheme, the traditional grandiose Persian char bagh replaced the modest Palestinian bustan (Hiriya in the Museum 2 2004, 87–91) (Figure 6). Today, bustans are planted or reclaimed within some of the national forests, especially in the Judean Hills. This process represents a change in the Jewish National Fund’s policy and the public attitude towards the

Figure 5. Winery Garden, Rehovot, 1986, Braudo Maoz, Braudo Maoz archive.

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Figure 6. Proposal for Hiriya competition, 2004, TEAM SUD, Beracha Foundation.

Figure 7. Urban Agriculture in Rishon Lezion, 2006, photographed by the author.

Palestinian villages and bustans; many were erased after 1948 war, and the land was planted with deciduous trees. Furthermore, the new planting and management policies also address the demand for more sustainable and ecologically sensitive development represented by the bustan. Currently, urban agriculture, which is increasingly popular in Israel’s urban spaces, may be considered the successor of the old bustan as a model of the utility 174


garden. Following global tendencies, more than a dozen urban agricultural projects are to be found throughout Israel, supported mainly by municipalities and NGO groups. In these gardens, a primarily middle-class population grows vegetables and flowers, more as leisure activity than economic need. For example a “garden for each resident” in Rishon LeZyion (Figure 7) today serves as a model for similar projects within metropolitan parks.

Figure 8. Terraces along Highway 6, 2004–2006, Braudo Maoz, Braudo Maoz archive.

Agricultural terraces. The agricultural terraces covering the slopes of the Judean Hills are a characteristic of the Mediterranean agricultural landscape. Designed to preserve water and prevent land erosion, the terraces are remnants of traditional agricultural practices from biblical times. Recently, the Judean terraces were nominated for the prestigious UNESCO World Heritage List. Contemporary landscape designers incorporate this constructive element in both traditional manner and new mode. As part of the reclamation of the forests of Judea, old terraces have recently been reconstructed and new ones built to serve as platforms for tree planting, mainly of fruit trees. Moreover, new terraces have become a part of engineering projects incorporating infrastructures within the existing landscape, hiding the impressive engineering structures by a traditional, modest, landscape typology. Aronson’s sunken interchange of Sha’ar Hagai in 1995 and the tunnel portal of the Cross-Israel highway by Braudo and Maoz in 2004 are two such projects (Figure 8). In flat areas, where terraces are not a necessity, they serve as markers for regional landscape patterns. Gideon Sarig makes use of this element in his Yarkon Park rock garden, where his new terraces create a “museal” representation of local geological formations and landscape patterns (Figure 9). Besides these ancient agricultural typologies, more recent ones connected to the Zionist agricultural project are becoming prominent in the repertoire of local landscape architects.

The orchard. By the late 19th century, citrus growing was considered the “jewel in the crown” of Israel’s agriculture (Egoz 1996, 183). Since the beginning of the 1980s, however, the industry has undergone a crisis. Thousands of hectares of groves have been cut down, and their disappearance, like that of other crops, has made the remaining sites cause for preservation and celebration. Visiting an orange orchard, picking oranges, squeezing juice, and learning about this vanished culture have become a standard field trip for elementary schoolchildren. Planting citrus in urban areas—squares, interchanges and other sites of great visibility—has become a way of reclaiming a sense of place, of recalling the past. Shlomo Aronson transplanted a 70 year-old grapefruit orchard in the middle of the elegant paved square of the Suzanne Delal Dance and Theater Center in 1989 in Tel Aviv (Aronson 1998) (Figure 10). Commemorating the neighborhood’s past and rehabilitating the silent witnesses of that period, the square has become both a living memorial and part of the revival of Tel Aviv. Landscape architect Zvi Dekel preserved another orchard in Hedera. In the garden that commemorates the late 19th century founders of the agricultural settlement, grass covers the ground, crossed by concrete irrigation canals that do not water the trees but mark their function. More authentic and modest in its design than the Suzanne Delal square, the garden is a gesture to the past landscapes of the town, which includes remnants of the sand dunes and swamps that once covered nearby areas (Figure 11). Alon-Mozes

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Figure 9. Rocks’ garden, Hayarkon Park, Tel Aviv, 1988, Gideon Sarig, photographed by the author.

Figure 10. Suzanne Delal Dance and Theater Center, Tel Aviv, 1989, Shlomo Aronson, Shlomo Aronson archive.

In his winning proposal for the reclamation of the Hiriya landfill, Peter Latz suggested planting the newly built terraces supporting the top of the garbage mountain with orange groves (Hiriya in the Museum 2 2004, 54–59). An echo of the orchards once covering the country’s coastal plain, the completely new orchard is a theatrical celebration of the nation’s glorious past and polluted present (Figure 12). 176


Wheat fields. Like the orange orchards, the wheat field is, without doubt, the continuing symbol of Zionist agricultural enterprise. Wheat and other fields of grain stretching from horizon to horizon are symbols of Israeli agriculture, extensively documented in works of art. In 1989, Shlomo Aronson sowed wheat along the Jerusalem Gabriel Sherover Promenade. The incorporation of such a crop into the sophisticated, urbane stone

Figure 11. Founders’ Park, Hedera, 2002, Zvi Dekel, Tichnun Nof, photographed by the author.

Figure 13. Sherover Promenade, Jerusalem, 1989, Shlomo Aronson, Shlomo Aronson archive.

Figure 12. Proposal for Hiriya competition, 2004, Peter Latz, Beracha Foundation.

promenade juxtaposed the worlds of the rural and the urban, the manmade and the natural, the city (Jerusalem) and the desert (the Judean Desert visible from the promenade to the east). Wheat fields symbolizing regional character indicate the seasons, changing from green to gold to brown as spring turns to summer (Figure 13). Years later, the wheat field has reappeared at the garden of Israel’s international airport, which, as described in the introduction, serves as a condensed simulacrum of Israel’s agricultural landscapes (Figure 1). Situated between the palm garden and the orange grove, Aronson’s wheat field is no longer a background for the olive trees as in Jerusalem but a distinct terrace that represents its precise location in Israel’s agricultural cross-section. Ironically, the garden, which was

intended to serve as a symbolic landscape welcome for tourists arriving in Israel, is hidden between two airport parking structures. C. SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION This paper has discussed the intricate relationships of landscape architecture and agriculture, especially during the modern and post-modern eras in Israel. It argues that although Israeli landscape architecture and global practice share some significant connections to agriculture, the Israeli case study is unique. While modernization and modernity led to the separation of these two fields, Israeli landscape architecture represents a unique pattern of development, primarily due to the special role of agriculture and the agriculturalists in the Alon-Mozes

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emergence of modern Israel, as both were embedded in the Zionist ethos. Nonetheless, like other Western models, Israeli landscape architecture detached itself from agriculture to form a discrete professional practice in the middle to late 20th century. Paradixically, today the disappearance of the agricultural landscape from everyday life brought it back to the designer’s repertoire. At different scales and modes of expression, the agricultural landscape is a source of inspiration and of plant materials, cultivation techniques, and images for landscape architects. Today the blossoming of agricultural landscapes in sites of national Israeli significance, in city squares, parks, and interchanges, is unique to the extent that it serves as a symbol of Israel-ness. Considering the limited number of contemporary Israeli agriculturalists, the economic value of agriculture, and that most of the people feel that the agricultural ethos was not shared upon their arrival Israel or that it is no longer relevant to them,10 this phenomenon is surprising. According to Cosgrove’s theory concerning social formation and symbolic landscape, the Israeli agricultural landscape of the early 20th century was a cultural, social, ideological, and economic product. It integrated biblical myth with social and technological reforms to create a concrete / symbolic landscape of the “genesis”—as the cradle of Zionist culture. Today, agriculture, formerly a landscape of production, has become predominantly a landscape of representation, one that the contemporary, hegemonic Israel wishes to preserve in an era of disintegration and social multiculturalism. Careful examination of the diverse projects presented in this paper reveals their common character as landscapes of memory, “museal” objects detached from their surroundings both spatially and temporally. These capsules, frozen in time and place, have become the relics of a cherished land, symbolic remnants of a heroic past. Since most of them are funded by the State, municipalities, or public organizations, they bear the footprint of the hegemonic national state in its effort to shape the identity of Israel’s landscape. Furthermore, as didactic landscapes, such areas are safe from alteration or disappearance. Does their 178


preservation endanger the future of less heroic landscapes, those designated solely for agricultural production? If agriculture is merely perceived as a cultural relic irrelevant to the present day, the preservation of the orchard in the interchange and the wheat field in the town park is fine. But if agriculture is still perceived as agriculture and not merely agri-business, it must be freed its “golden cage.” In these days of global warming and water shortages, planting orchards in Israel’s coastal plateau is a bad idea (as it always has been), but abandoning all agricultural practices in the coastal plateau is not a good solution either. Will urban Israeli landscape architects lead a creative breakthrough, and (re)integrate the two fields? The answer is in their hands. NOTES 1. For detailed documentation of the project see: American Society of Landscape Architects, 2005 ASLA Professional Awards. www.asla.org / awards / 2005 / 05winners / entry_068 .html. 2. The bustan is a traditional enclosed utility garden common in the Mediterranean region. 3. Castello, 1599 in Lazzaro 1990, 42–43 and 168. All are presented as part of broad agricultural landscapes. 4. The productive urban landscape was advocated by landscape architects and the American Morgenthau plan, which aimed to control Germany by converting its economic base from industry to agriculture (Gröning 2002). 5. The success of the 2002 Internet website of CornCam (documenting an Iowa cornfield 24 hours a day) points to the close attachment of many Americans to the agricultural landscape. Carla Corbin discussed this recent phenomenon as an expression of national identity (Corbin 2002). 6. Thousands of the immigrants were trained on European farms, and many acquired an academic education in agriculture and related disciplines, including landscape gardening, before settling in Palestine. 7. For a comprehensive history of the school, see Enis 1998. 8. The preference for the agricultural landscapes as the leading theme along the road outweighed that for development of the corridor as a linear, decorative, more intensive garden. 9. Agnes Denes planted a two-acre field of wheat on a landfill near the World Trade Center, New York (1982). Situating her project not far from the New York Stock Exchange, the art-

ist made “the activities of the city and the countryside come together for a brief moment” (Matilsky 1992, 51). Between 1974 and 1980, Bonnie Sherk cultivated the “Crossroads Community Farm” under and near a freeway in San Francisco, “providing a place for humans, plants and animals to coexist harmoniously” (Matilsky 1992, 54). 10. Agriculture has lost its prominence as a leading Zionist ethos, as well as its economic merit (Feitelson 1999). Agriculture currently accounts for only 1.8% of the net domestic product (although related industies account for a larger share of the economy). Agriculture has also lost its place as a way of life—as only 2% of the labor force is employed in agriculture, and less than 9% of the population lives in rural areas (ICBS 2006).

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AUTHOR TAL ALON-MOZES is a landscape architect. She studied biology and art history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and landscape architecture at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. She holds an MLA in Landscape Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley and a PhD from the Technion, where she is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning. She is particularly interested in the cultural aspects of landscape production in Palestine and Israel.