Paper short abstract:

Since the 1920s, landscape gardeners transferred the culture of landscape design from urbanized Europe to Palestine. Struggling against physical, social and cultural obstacles, they managed to create a unique garden and landscape culture both in the agricultural settlements and the Hebrew towns.

Paper long abstract:

Since the early 1920s, European landscape gardeners immigrated Palestine after graduating Western European vocational and academic horticultural schools (the "Israelitische Gartenbauschule" in Ahlem, Germany, was the most prominent among them). They established a professional community which aspired to shape the landscapes of the Hebrew towns, the agricultural settlements, neighborhoods, and gardens. Familiar with the period's codes of design, they asked to plant the modern European garden on the sand dunes of Tel Aviv, and to apply the rules of landscape planning amid the wheat fields of Jezreel Valley.

The paper examines the transfer and the mechanism of implementing modern European landscape design concepts and schemes in the newly built town of Tel Aviv and the modest pioneer landscapes of the Kibbutzim. However, this transfer was not just about knowledge transfer but rather a transfer of culture - a set of repertoires for occupying the outdoor environments. Through design competitions, professional literature, and built model gardens (such as Bialik's private garden and Meir municipal park) European ideas were tested on the Levant grounds. The implementation was influence by various obstacles such as the unique Palestinian geography and climate, the poor local technological and horticultural knowledge, the local culture of Palestinian gardening, and the attitude of the Zionist ideology toward the land of Israel.

On the eve of statehood, Hebrew gardens and design landscapes became a distinctive example of modern landscape architecture design, on the margin of the European center. It was neither European nor local but rather a creative unique phenomenon.