Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00620:body:0:p28
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00620
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 75328–78181

and east of West Block (see Figure 13),[50] and reinforcing this with further plantings of native trees, shrubs and groundcovers.  The front edge of Camp Hill, facing the provisional Parliament House, may have been mass planted with the 'Mixed Acacias' labelled on the 1928 plan; a massed planting in this location is certainly visible in c. 1928 views across the precinct (Figure 13) and was later extended to the embankment immediately east of West Block[51] before gradual attrition and loss to subsequent developments and changing land management practices.
Despite the construction of the new Parliament House and the Federation Mall land bridge connecting the old and new Parliament Houses, and a modern car park to the immediate east of West Block, this landscape character and its rationale endures.

2.4.4               Charles Weston (1866-1935)
During the early 1920s, the character of Canberra as a city in the landscape was given form by horticulturalist Thomas Charles George Weston (generally known as Charles).  Weston was officer-in-charge of Afforestation (later Parks and Gardens) at the national capital from 1913 to 1926.  He was an island of continuity during a period of rapid change in the management and administration of the emerging city.
Weston's challenge, as noted in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, was:
… to create an urban landscape [at the remote, infertile, windy and rabbit infested location] consonant with the capital city to be built at Canberra.  He was also expected to establish a local forestry industry.  Weston set down on paper his four objectives: to establish a first-class nursery, to raise stocks of plants likely to prove suitable, to reserve all local hilltops and improve their tree cover, and to seek out and procure useful seeds.[52]
His work in Canberra fell into two phases.  The first, from 1913 to 1920, was focussed on the establishment of nurseries and plant propagation.  The second, from 1920 to 1926, was focussed on planting and landscape development.[53]
In general, Weston favoured conifers as a key structure planting.  In 1917 he stated that three cedars, Deodar, Atlantic and Lebanon (Cedrus deodara, Cedrus atlantica and Cedrus libani) would be useful as the chief arboreal feature of the city.[54]  He also pioneered the use of several eucalypts such as Brittle Gum (Eucalyptus mannifera) and Argyle Apple (Eucalyptus cinerea).
Weston's approach to formal avenue plantings was to use one predominant species, often adding a smaller scale tree that would give seasonal colour, such as an avenue of Blue Gum (Eucalyptus bicostata) with Flowering Cherry Plum (Prunus cerasifera 'Nigra').  A variation on this approach was to use a conifer, such as a cypress, cedar or pine, as the major planting.  In some instances a Kurrajong (Brachychiton populneus) was used as the smaller