Landscapes as environmental storytellers

Contemporary urban development, a primary driver of landscape transformation, systematically erases the ecological memory embedded in soils, hydrology, and native plant communities. This memory reveals the capacity of past environmental states to influence present and future ecosystem dynamics, constituting a critical, yet overlooked, form of place-based knowledge essential for adaptive capacity and resilience. This paper argues that landscape architecture lacks the theoretical frameworks to recognize and work with this ecological memory, instead treating landscapes as passive substrates for design. By bringing landscape architecture, ecology, Indigenous knowledge, and geography into conversation, we reframe landscapes as active environmental storytellers: repositories of accumulated intelligence that maintain place specificity. Our analysis identifies a critical gap between scientific understanding of these processes and their application in design practice, where ecological relationships are often instrumentalised as constraints. Three key points of convergence emerge from this synthesis: the necessity of material substrates for memory, the relational nature of place-making, and the recognition of landscapes as active knowledge systems. The case study of Anzac Cove, Gallipoli, illustrates a practice that works with intertwined ecological and cultural memory through minimal intervention, positioning design as stewardship. We propose that soil systems, functioning as measurable environmental archives and cultural knowledge holders, offer a vital methodological bridge. For urban infrastructures to be truly resilient, landscape architecture must shift from imposing form to cultivating existing ecological memory, countering the costly amnesia of standardized development and preserving the environmental knowledge foundational for sustainable urban futures.