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SECTION 4 
You will hear a lecturer discussing public parks. 
Most of us are familiar with a local park. We spend time there, play there, and have some of our 
best memories in these places. But what is a park? Basically, it can be defined as a natural, or at 
least semi-natural, piece of land, planted with a variety of trees, bushes, and flowers, protected and 
reserved for 
the enjoyment of all citizens. There are usually Q31 regulations about the sorts of behaviour that 
can take place within. And sometimes there are facilities such as children’s playgrounds, or fields 
for ball games and other sorts of activities. For this reason, if there is Q32 grass, it is kept Q32 
short, and this also discourages the breeding of insect pests. A well-maintained park actually needs 
a lot of people to look after it, and more so if the park showcases special plants, flowers, or trees, in 
which ease it is called a ‘botanic garden’. In complete contrast, if the park is big and remote 
enough, it is sometimes designated as a wilderness park, to be left completely alone and untouched, 
protected from all Q33 development in order to allow wild species, both plant and animal, to live 
undisturbed. 
But it is the urban park - the sort of park that most people are familiar with, that I want to talk 
about now. These preserve natural landscapes for the pleasure of the urban population, most 
commonly just for passive recreation - in other words, allowing people just to observe the trees, 
and lie in the grass, and such Q34 passive recreation is certainly needed. 
Continuing on the subject of parks, it might surprise you to know that once there were none. A 
thousand years ago, there was no need, since there were already extensive open spaces, forests, and 
wilderness surrounding most cities and towns - for example, in Europe. These dark dank forests 
were large and even dangerous, full of wild animals and with the potentially fatal result of Q35 
getting lost. Hence, fairy tales evolved about witches living in these areas, and the wolves and 
bears, which could threaten young children. 
However, with the rapidly increasing human population, the original wilderness and natural open 
spaces were intruded upon. Forests were cut down as populations spread, and with them, urban 
pollution and further deforestation. But it was only with the advent of the Q36 Industrial 
Revolution that people 
realised natural areas needed to be preserved, to give the populace access to the sort of nature that 
was fast disappearing due to the uncontrolled development and demand for resources. 
The first park, expressly designed for that purpose, is usually considered to be Princes Park in 
Liverpool. This was in 1841, on land donated to the public by a rich iron merchant. With such a 
generous donation (worth about Q37 £50,000), the council decided to invest £5,000 of its own 
money in making it look good. Consequently, they hired a landscape designer, Joseph Paxton, who 
designed twisting turning pathways among shade-giving trees, all based around a Q38 central lake. 
In many ways, it became the prototype for all later large parks, including the famous Central Park 
in New York. 

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