The word ‘keeper’ has been used for centuries in connection with managed green spaces. The Oxford English Dictionary quotes John Heywood's use of the word in 1530, referring to ‘rangers and keepers of certayne places as forests, parkes, purlewes and chasys’, and aligns the word in this context with others signifying a position of primary responsibility, analogous to the Keeper of the Privy Seal. It was a technical and managerial role associated with maintenance of a park and its stock.

With the development of public parks in the mid-19th century the term was adopted to new use. By 1855 ‘park keeper’ could be used merely to signify someone who manned the gates. During the initial period of public park development, the term was used alongside others with various nuances of seniority and responsibility. As W W Pettigrew, parks superintendent in Manchester (1914–32), put it in his 1937 book, Municipal Parks: Layout, Management and Administration:

Divergence between local authorities is nothing new, but this inconsistency, viewed from the early 20th century, also reflects the development of public parks management. There were simply no management models or structures available in the early period: nothing like free public access to high-quality horticulture had ever been attempted before.

The potential difficulties were little understood. Within a month of the opening of Manchester's first three public parks in 1846, the public parks committee was hastily assembling regulations, signage and additional staff, the need for which had not been foreseen. Incredibly, ‘no one had been made responsible for the management of the parks and the necessity for such action seems to have taken the committee by surprise’.