The Role of Chinese Plants in Hungarian Landscape Architecture

Most outdoor plants in Hungarian horticulture are exotas mainly from Middle and East Asia and North America. The flora of China is diversified and has many species because the last glacial period did not reach China. The richness of the Chinese flora was known for Europeans by the missionaries and medics first in 19th cectury. Later some bigger nurseries sent expeditions in China to collect new plants. Nowadays the Hungarian landscape architecture is impossible without Chinese plants.

The Impact of Chinese Culture on European Landscape Design

The English garden design style and the landscape garden movement became the most emblematic cultural achievement of England in the 18th-19th century. The natural garden style proved to be the symbol of the liberal philosophy and the enlightened way of thinking. But the English landscape garden, which can be seen as an idealized view of nature, is inspired by the classical landscape paintings and is also influenced by the classic Chinese gardens, which had recently been described by European travellers. The interest for Chinese culture, architecture and garden design spread around the British island and inspired the talented garden designers. The gardens of Chambers created a new section in the picturesque landscape gardens, the so called anglo-chinoiseric gardens where eastern, mainly Chinese architectural motives and garden elements have been used in most cases without integrating the Chinese nature philosophy. This first, more or less formal effects of Chinese garden design on European landscape architecture were overwritten by garden designers and horticulturalist during the gardenesque period of the early 19th century when great variety in plant design was taken into the focus of landscape architecture.

The long term preservation of an 18th century gene bank heritage

The allée is one of the oldest instruments and forms of landscape architecture, which has often been used from the Antiquity for the expression of visual and functional relationships, for the delimitation of space, or for the pictorial creation of movement. The several hundred years old allées of the late baroque age, which still live among us as the witnesses of bygone times, represent a special value throughout Europe. The longevity and the respectable size as such bestow a certain value upon the trees. However, the allées also stand for a garden art, landscape, culture historical and natural value, which in a summarized way are called cultural heritage. Furthermore, the gene pool of the proven longevous, high tolerance tree specimens is a natural and genetic heritage of scientific signification. The age of the trees and allées is finite. Even with a careful and professional care, the renewal is inevitable, which, beyond technical problems of landscape architecture might raise many scientific, nature conservation, yes, esthetical and ethical questions. This is why there is no universal methodology, but there are aspects and examination procedures of general validity with the help of which a renewal can be prepared. The renewal concept of the lime tree allée in Nagycenk aims at the protection and the transmission of the value-ensemble embodied in the allée. One part of the value-ensemble is the spiritual, cultural heritage, the extraordinary value of the landscape-scaled, landscape architectural creation planted and taken care of by the Széchenyis. On the other hand the two and a half centuries old trees represent an inestimable botanical and genetic wealth. Its transmission and preservation is a scientifically important program coming up to the Széchenyi heritage. After the registration of the originally planted old trees, the complete nursery material of the “Széchenyi limes” necessary for the replanting can be produced by vegetative propagation. The gradual replacement of the stand with its own propagation material, by the carefully raised nursery trees of the same age can be a model for the gene-authentic renewal method – a novelty even at an international level.

A Moesz-vonal jövőben várható elmozdulásának térinformatikai modellezési lehetőségei

According to the results of the regional climate models our future climate will be warmer and more arid. It has a high importance that the landscape architecture should become acquainted with the expected change to become able to adapt to it. Therefore, it is necessary to draw the future distribution of the plants or to model the shift of the Moesz-line, which characterizes multiple plants simultaneously, to visualize the extent and the direction of the climate change. Our research aimed to model the Moesz-line and display the results on maps, and compare the different modeling methods (Line modeling, Distribution modeling, Isotherm modeling). The model gave impressive results that meet our expectations. Two of the three proved methods showed that the Moesz-line will shift to Central Poland by 2070.

Changing visual value of deciduous species in the climate change

The article deals with the changing visual value of deciduous species. Due to climate change, the climatic patterns found on the plants’ growing area may change. Therefore, foliage of deciduous trees changes itscolor in the fall season witha different timing and intensity. This shift can modify the functional, ornamental and ecological value of these plants in the fall season, which is of special interest in the context of landscape design. However, this effect of climate change hasn’t been examined in terms of landscape architecture yet.In the article we are looking for deciduous species that can be appropriate subjectsforresearch, we are giving suggestions for choosing the right location for a future research and proposing available resources of satellite images, that can provide the basis for evaluation of leaf coloring. We also review already existing methods for calculating the degree of fall leaf coloring.We propose a novel method of satellite image processing to evaluate the coloring of a stand. Leaf Coloring Index (LCI) shows the leaf color’s relation to the color realms. LCI is appropriate for setting up a phenological model based onclimate data in a future research. Based on future climate models, the change of the examined stand’s visual value can be predicted. The results might affect the future use of plant species in landscape architecture.