Connecting people, spaces and places – a can of worms or a life time commitment?

Speaker: Ian Baggott

The talk will explore the changing role of urban green space professionals with respect to community engagement and how government policy has influenced this. Ian will explore what connection and engagement mean, what forms they might take, what levels there might be and why does it happen. Who leads, who facilitates and supports, who does and doesn’t get involved.

He will try to use examples from his 30 years’ experience in the sector including working with diverse and disconnected communities, contested landscapes and uncomfortable stories.

Ian Baggott is the MD of CFP, a Landscape and Heritage consultancy, which he set up over 20 years ago. Over that time the small and highly skilled team has delivered over 600 projects including almost 150 NLHF funded schemes. He has written national guidance, led national research, given evidence to parks enquiries and a parks APPG. He holds Fellowships of the Royal Society for Arts and the Royal Geographical Society, is an Associate Member of the Institute for the Study of Welsh Estates, a collaborator with the Centre for Heritage Research and Training at Swansea University and has recently been a visiting lecturer at the Welsh School of Architecture.

Being Awkward

Speaker: David Lambert

Community is an over-used word for an undervalued resource; an abused resource too, often taken for granted by decision-makers and policy makers.  Community participation often takes the form of resistance rather than collaboration.  Its stance, initially at least, is that of the outsider and its bottom-up perspective is inevitably disruptive of top-down views.   Almost by definition, community input is contrary and pugnacious at least until trust has been earnt.   For a community to make its voice heard it has to learn new rules of engagement and even learn a new language; it has to develop a thick skin to resist feeling excluded or patronised; and somehow to convert the fuel of anger into meaningful participation.

David Lambert is director of the Parks Agency.  These days he focuses less on consultancy and more on his local community.  He is a director of a community farm and is learning to be an activist, a milkman, a carer, a biodynamic gardener and an undertaker.

EVA – Lanxmeer, Culemborg, The Netherlands

Speaker: Dr Jan Woudstra

The concept of eco-housing has been well-established since the 1970s, with experimental schemes around the world. However, the notion of sustainability in the 1980s gave the concept a new incentive of trying to achieve a circular economy. What were the new techniques required to develop a sustainable energy policy, and what about a renewed vision for agriculture in a way that respects natural processes? How can such ideas and visions be carried more broadly with renewed ethics of responsibility for resources and solidarity with other peoples around the globe? These were some of the questions that helped to define the collaborative approach developed at EVA – Lanxmeer, which prides itself as a spatially high-quality living environment that is well-integrated within and in harmony with the wider landscape, both rural and urban. Achieved though a democratic process facilitated by landscape architect Marleen Kaptein from 1995, professional advice was provided by Copijn landscape architects and Joachim Eble architects.  

Public - Private - Volunteers – Charities: the changing face of Landscape Practice and the implications for communities

Speaker: Helen Brown

From the late 1970s the increasing adoption of public / private partnerships have had a huge impact on the delivery and outcomes for our rural and urban landscapes and their communities. It also has driven large changes to a career in Landscape Architecture.

 The talk will examine some of the implications for publicly funded landscape practice and projects with the move to arm’s length trusts, charities, private consultancy, the use of volunteers, friends of groups and how this sector has developed, for better or worse.     

Helen Brown CMLI (retired) has had a sequence of careers in the visual arts from surface textile design to Landscape Architecture. She worked in public practice on major park restoration and conservation projects including the EU Life funded ‘London Lakes Project’ and ‘The History of Battersea Park’ a public digital interactive exhibition which won the 1993 LI Comms Award, both at Battersea Park as part of Jacky McCabe’s Landscape team at Wandsworth Council; and also at Crystal Palace Park with Bromley Council’s LA project team with Gustafson Porter’s restoration, conservation and development project, HLF funded project.  She was a design tutor at University of Greenwich and taught Historic Garden Conservation and Design with Community amongst other topics.

With the mantra ‘participation not consultation’, Helen is active in community greening projects in SE London, and is an officer in the newly designated Charlton Neighbourhood Forum. She is currently working with the public and several management organisations on securing an historic landscape study for Charlton House’s C17 landscapes and gardens.

Refurbishing the Eco-city Augustenborg Malmö, Sweden – social processes and landscape design at the turn of the millennium

Speakers: Ann-Sofi Högborg and Bengt Persson

The housing area of Augustenborg in Malmö, Sweden, is stunning according to its loveliness and functioning as a working landscape - for drainage, biodiversity and play, but also by the fact that it was refurbished 25 years ago with an existing community. Since the 1940s the Augustenborg residential area has been a model and a success story. When Augustenborg was planned and built in 1948-1952, it was the first major housing development project in post-war Malmö. The story of Malmö’s modern transformation that puts focus on sustainable urban development, in fact began in Augustenborg. When the Eco-city project was implemented in the late 1990s, it was the first time an existing residential area had been transformed through a major sustainability initiative and environmental regeneration. In this FOLAR talk we will focus on the social processes and the landscape design that led to what Augustenborg is today.

Ann-Sofi Högborg, MSc, Landscape Architect, owner of Svenska Landskap AB (Swedish Landscapes Ltd). Expert in socially based residential landscape design. Responsible for social processes and landscape design of the first part of the refurbishment of the residential gardens in the Eco-city Augustenborg 1999-2001.

Bengt Persson, AgrD, MSc, Landscape Architect, owner of Landskapsarkitekterna i Lund AB (Landscape Architects of Lund Ltd). Expert on the history of 20th century residential gardens in Sweden, co-author of Swedish Residential Yards 1930-1959. One of the editors of the anthology The Eco-city Augustenborg – experiences and lessons learned, published 2021.

Landscape of Communities

This year’s FOLAR Symposium will be on the subject of the Landscape of Communities. These are seen as amenity landscapes which respond first to the wishes and ways of the local community, whether local residents or workers. Landscape Institute President Elect, Carolin Göhler, will chair the day

Speakers include: Leah McNally of the London Wildlife Trust on their community involvement; Guy Redmond of Leaves of Green on their work for parish councils on nature based green space; Helen John on the Crossbones Graveyard and Garden of Remembrance: an intergenerational legacy concerning her work for the Bankside Open Spaces Trust in Southwark; Jan Woudstra on the work of the landscape gardener Robert Marnock’s concept for the Ladbroke Grove Housing development in the mid nineteenth century; Sarah Cooke from the Groundwork Trust on their work with communities in London.

One theme for the FOLAR symposia is how the past can inform the present and the future. This is a symposium with full opportunity for discussion with question time after each talk and a general discussion with the speakers at the end of the day, so everyone can have the opportunity to speak.

There will be time to talk and network, to explore the MERL’s pop up exhibition in the reading room (showing material from our, and other, archives on landscapes for housing), time to browse and buy from the FOLAR book stall, and more! .

FOLAR members and non members are welcome We look forward to seeing you there!  Numbers are limited to fifty.  

Book your tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/728908483897?aff=oddtdtcreator

Scrambled City: Deindustrialisation and the Merging of Town and Country in late-Twentieth Century Britain

Speaker: Assistant professor Dr Otto Saumarez Smith

The original conception of the Garden Cities proposed a new relationship between town and countryside. This talk is about the fullest realisation in Britain of such a merging of the urban and the rural, not least in the Mark III New Towns of the 1970s, which were , bound together by networks of roads, telephone wires, and electricity pylons. The talk will keep in sight the fact that these processes happened in places with existing environmental and architectural histories, and intersected with other centrifugal processes such as electrification, deindustrialisation, suburbanisation, and automatability.

Otto Saumarez Smith is Lecturer in Architectural History at the University of Warwick. His most recent book is Boom Cities: Architect Planners and the Politics of Radical Urban Renewal in 1960s Britain (Oxford University Press, 2019). He is currently researching and writing 'The End of Urban Modernism in the 1970s'. He is a Trustee and Chair of the Casework Committee for the Twentieth Century Society

Some remarkable post-war urban renewal schemes in the Netherlands by Aldo van Eyck and Herman Herzberger

Speaker: Dr Jan Woudstra

Post-war modernist housing in the Netherlands is well known as are the suburban housing that materialised, all based on garden city notions of two storey terraced housing and gardens. By the 1970s there was a reaction against this that sought housing in more urban settings while avoiding both high-rise and low-rise schemes. Almere Haven was one such attempt to re-create the atmosphere of older Dutch cities, but this talk concentrates on two schemes, one in Nieuwestraat/ Waterstraat in Zwolle by Aldo van Eyck (1971-5), and Houttuinen by Herman Hertzberger in Amsterdam (1982). These schemes have been praised by architects worldwide but have largely escaped critical review from a landscape perspective. This talk looks at the context, analysing innovation and provides an analysis as to how these schemes have fared.

Dr Jan Woudstra is Reader in Landscape History and Theory at University of Sheffield. He trained in landscape design, horticulture and conservation and practiced as a landscape architect and historian, including the restoration of Chiswick House and Privy Gardens, Hampton Court. He has been teaching part and full time for 35 years, and at University of Sheffield since 1995. Guided by a general concern for the quality of the built environment his research activity has aimed to increase knowledge within the landscape profession and to challenge perceived notions about landscape design and research. He has authored, co-authored and edited many books, most recently, The Politics of Street Trees (Routledge, 2022) and in press is Future Histories, Teaching history in landscape schools.

The Evolution of the Council Estate Ideals and Realities

Speaker: John Boughton

John’s talk will look at the history of social housing from the nineteenth century to the present-day, with a particular focus on the evolving form and layout of council estates. He will examine the early influence of the Garden City movement and the changing nature of ‘Corporation suburbia’ as council housing grew in the interwar period. After 1945, new planning ideas emerged stressing neighbourhood and mixed development but were adapted with difficulty to the mass public housing drive of the 1960s and the rise of multi-storey development. The well-regarded low-rise, high-density schemes of the 1970s were seen as a corrective to preceding excesses. As council housing declined in the 1980s, regeneration schemes often revived more traditional streetscapes. Throughout this story, politicians and planners have grappled with social change, architectural fashion and the ever-present tension between high ideals and financial possibility.

John Boughton is a social historian. He has written two books, Municipal Dreams: the Rise and Fall of Council Housing (Verso, 2018) and A History of Council Housing in 100 Estates (RIBA Books, 2022). He is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Architecture of the University of Liverpool and blogs at municipaldreams.wordpress.com

Coming Home: The spaces and routines of arrival and departure in British housing

Speaker: Luis Diaz

This presentation will examine the route and spaces that link the city to the front door in British housing. Using Alexandra Road (1978) designed by Neave Brown for the Camden County Council I will outline the way in the relationship between spaces and actions are reciprocally defined and re-defined rather than deterministic. This is followed by a series of examples from the history of British housing examining different permutations in the way access and arrival have been configured. Starting with the Georgian terrace through to post-war housing and up to contemporary housing I will attempt to demonstrate how different configurations contribute to the way we identify with our homes. As our journey home passes through different landscapes and territories we associate and construct relationships with them, ascribing and defining different levels of community (district, neighbourhood, block, street, neighbours). The argument will be that this arena plays a critical role in our sense of belonging to a place and community or of being alienated from it. A short survey of examples will show that Britain has experimented with many different configurations, perhaps more than any other country. With councils beginning to build housing again and high density a goal for many developments this lost history is worth examining to learn how we can provide opportunities for communities to develop and for residents to feel a part of their neighbourhood.

Luis Diaz trained as an architect at the New York Institute of Technology and attended the Berlage Institute (Amsterdam) in its founding year. He taught at the New York Institute of Technology and co-founded the Brooklyn Architects Collective before pursuing research study at the Bartlett (UCL), The London School of Economics, and the University of Brighton. During this journey he studied with Robert Slutzky, Henri Ciriani, Herman Hertzberger, Adrian Forty, and Richard Sennett. Since relocating to the UK he has taught at the Kent Institute of Architecture and Design and is now Course Leader for the undergraduate architecture course at the University of Brighton. Over the last 25 years his research has focused on housing issues.

Hopeful Dreams, Stark Realities - planning Britain's postwar reconstruction

Speaker: Dr Catherine Flinn

The postwar built environment in Britain, for the past thirty years, has been condemned mainly as a failure. This perception of failure looms especially large in light of the yawning gap between what was hoped for and what was realized. The rhetoric of blame, for the loss of beauty and even ‘Britishness’ in the rebuilt blitzed cities, has focused on planners and architects. But comments like those above ignore evidence about the background in which this built environment was created. Perspectives are too often shaped by recent biases and values rather than historic context. During and after the Second World War those who wrote and planned for the future focused on hope and potential, publishing modernist visions of new city centres. This talk will focus on how planning for reconstruction was approached, the factors that inhibited realisation of plans, and the realities faced by blitzed cities in postwar Britain.

Catherine Flinn has a doctorate in modern British history and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She previously took degrees in landscape architecture, architectural history and garden history and conservation. She returned to academia following a professional career in architecture, landscape and planning. Dr Flinn has taught at several universities in the US and the UK. Her research focuses on postwar reconstruction - in particular the political, economic and social impacts of rebuilding and redevelopment. Her book “Rebuilding Britain’s Blitzed Cities: Hopeful Dreams, Stark Realities” was published by Bloomsbury and is available in paperback.

Landscape of Housing

In the planning and design of housing, the presence and arrangement of outdoor spaces will be of particular interest to future residents. But is there a yawning gap between what is shown on paper and what is implemented later on the ground? Will children have places to play and teenagers somewhere to hang out? Will there be space to grow food and to garden? Will there be trees to shade the footpaths in hot weather? Can people walk and cycle safely? Will rainwater be collected and reused on site? And most critically of all, how will the landscape be managed and budgeted for?

We will bring together an exciting line up of speakers and topics including Karen Fitzsimon on New Ash Green, Prof Otto Saumarez Smith on the Mark III new towns, Gerry Kemp on Byker Wall, Drs Luca Csepely-Knorr, Amber Roberts and Matthew Steele on Darbourne and Darke and Lillington Street, Alice Grahame on Walter Segal self-build housing in Lewisham, and Paula Garvey on Kings Cross and Elephant Park.

Join us for our first live event back at The MERL. There will be time to talk and network, to explore the MERL’s pop up exhibition in the reading room (showing material from our, and other, archives on landscapes for housing, now online exhibition time to browse and buy from the FOLAR book stall, and more.

Some of The MERL’s pop-up exhibition items have been transferred to an online exhibition at FOLAR’s suggestion. We are thrilled to include this here! The exhibition explores the symposium themes highlighting some key contemporary Landscape Architects, using documents and drawings from the Landscape Institute collections held in the MERL’s Special Collections.

Click on the image to find out more.

Three further talks which formed part of the programme will be available at some future point.

Professor Otto Saumarez Smith on the Mark III new towns will be available in Castles in the Air series.

Dr Luca Csepely-Knorr, Dr Amber Roberts and Dr Matthew Steele on Lillington Street and Darbourne and Darke, and Paula Garvey on Kings Cross & and Elephant Park London]

The social value of land

The land has a profound impact on who we are, on our health and our wellbeing, but it is valued as though it was a soulless commodity. In this talk Professor Flora Samuel will offer a method for taking the social value of land and its impact on people into account in decisions about land use. She will argue for a digital map based system that allows people to input on a constant basis into decisions about their places. This proposal is based on a series of recent funded research projects based at the University of Reading, Mapping Eco Social Assets, Community Consultation for Quality of Life and the Better Places Toolkit.

Flora Samuel is an architect, author and academic and is Professor of Architecture in the Built Environment at the University of Reading. Concerned by the seeming inability of the Architecture profession in Britain to convey to the public its value, her work focuses on architects, their skills and how they communicate them to the outside world. Her particular focus is on homes, housing and neighbourhoods in the UK and beyond. She feels strongly that a new model of architectural education is needed in order that the profession becomes more relevant. Her new model encompasses research, collaboration and business skills allied to creativity, design and social responsibility. She was appointed as the first RIBA Vice President for Research in 2018 and leads the Community Consultation for Quality of Life, an AHRC funded project aiming to produce a Code of Conduct for Consultation across the four nations.

Imagining desirable landscape futures

We live in a period of rapid environmental change with potentially great impact on the landscapes where people develop their livelihoods, interact, and shape their cultures. Today’s actions to protect the environment are based on perceptions of what could be good or bad in future, beneficial or detrimental, necessary, or excessive. Our visions of future landscapes are inevitably based on past and current experiences, and today’s solutions may not have an enduring effect. This talk by Dr Eirini Saratsi considers how our imaginative futures reflect values of care for specific places and considerations of potential challenges and opportunities for the landscapes we would like to live in in the future. The insights come from a project based on public dialogue, carried out in 2014, where people were asked to craft and visualise their desirable vision of the future in 2060 and consider the types of actions necessary to achieve this. These visions compare and, to some degree, validate current policies and social actions for tackling environmental challenges and can provide suggestions for landscape planning and management in the future.

Dr Saratsi is a human geographer with longstanding interests in landscape and environmental studies and works in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Reading. Eirini has collaborated with colleagues in the UK and internationally to deliver a range of research projects concerned with integrating cultural and social values in landscape management and the role of arts and participatory approaches in environmental decision making and the protection of nature.

Contrasting Fortunes - Two high-value designed landscapes in Reading

Landscape architect Tony Edwards will outline the transformation of 180 acres of a poor quality flood plain into a business park with international appeal and a variety of awards. His involvement with this project has been for over thirty years with a continuing role in its management and this has been a key factor in its success. How difficult was that to engineer? And how typical is this of his other landscape projects?

Broad Street, Reading was pedestrianised in 1992 and the redesign was constructed in three phases. Colin Moore, of Moore Piet + Brookes Landscape Architects and lead designers for the project, will introduce the scheme and consider issues concerning maintenance, funding and changes in city wide planning decisions that have impacted on this carefully conceived project.

Tony Edwards qualified as an architect and worked for Sir Basil Spence on Hyde Park Cavalry Barracks before changing to other practices and undertaking housing design. He qualified as a landscape architect and joined Brian Clouston and Partners where he became a director involved in a variety of schemes including large scale reclamation of steelworks, amenity tips, gas works, new housing and regeneration of housing estates. He is a Fellow of the Landscape Institute.

Having formed new practices after leaving Clouston , Tony has been responsible for further large scale master-planning projects, residential landscape schemes, business parks, schools and commercial schemes. His practice worked with Michal Van Valkenberg from the USA on the white water rafting scheme at the Olympics in 2012. He has appeared as an expert witness at a number of public inquires and his practices have won numerous Civic Trust, Landscape and other awards. He was a Design Review Panel Member for the Design Council/CABE for over a decade and still sits on the DRPs of Merton and Richmond.

Colin Moore is a Landscape Architect and Urban Designer who has recently retired having worked in the landscape industry for 50 years.  He was an associate of John Kelsey Associates for 6 years and then senior partner of Moore Piet + Brookes (MP+B) for 20 years before becoming an independent landscape consultant.  Colin is well known to many landscape architects for his 35 years teaching for the final professional exam and his expertise in construction and maintenance contracts and the CDM Regulations. He is chair of the JCLI Contracts Forum and secretary of FOLAR.

Whiteknights: from private landscape park to university campus

The expansion of British Universities in the post war period fuelled the demand for new sites, especially for campus universities. For the University of Reading ‘the acquisition of Whiteknights was the most important single event in the history of the University.’ Much time and energy has been put into the maintenance of the park. The question remains as to how successfully the historic landscape, dating back to the 18th century, has been preserved in the face of the various demands made upon it. Indeed the survival of the park, a mile from the centre of Reading, is a story in itself given that at various times it was widely regarded as one of the most valuable sites in southern England and ‘ripe for development’.

Dr Phillada Ballard is a historical consultant specialising in buildings, landscapes and gardens. Former curator at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, she has had a long involvement with the restoration of Joseph Chamberlain’s Highbury estate in Birmingham. She has written several books on landscapes, gardens and buildings of Birmingham. She lives in Reading and her interest in suburban landscapes led her to research the Whiteknights estate.

Based on sites and projects in and around Reading, FOLAR presents a series of lunchtime talks at the MERL in which different landscape types are explored in terms of how and why land-use and landscape decisions are made, and by whom. Actions taken invariably have long term consequences on places and people. How can land be valued, planned and managed to better reflect and accommodate the needs and involvement of local people? What sort of positive future landscapes will respond effectively to the complexities of climate change and biodiversity? Who is really caring for the landscape? There are no simple answers but we hope these talks, presented by a professor of architecture, a researcher in geography and environmental science, a landscape historian and two landscape architects, will open up good debate.

York Gate Garden - the Spencer Legacy

The history of York Gate begins in 1951 when the Spencer family bought a 6-acre farm on the edge of Leeds, and now its current status is as one of the finest post-war small gardens in the country. Ben will share his philosophies on the importance of moving the garden forward while being true to its origins and the spirit of place. Once a family garden that opened occasionally for the National Garden Scheme to a busy garden open 5 days a week. He will look at how the garden has evolved to deal with these challenges. A wonderful Arts and Crafts style-garden that has become a Yorkshire treasure. Every garden needs skilled people to maintain and nurture it and one of the group of volunteers is Meg Morton, she will tell us what it is about this garden that first attracted her and what keeps her here.

Ben Preston has a passion for people and plants led Ben towards a career in horticulture. He has been Head Gardener at York Gate for just over 4 years. After studying Horticulture and Plant Science at Nottingham Trent University, undertaking a traineeship at Audley End in Essex and working in gardens around the country including Great Dixter, he has settled back in Yorkshire. His interest in historic gardens and innovative plant design is pushing York Gate forward while being true to its origins.

Meg Morton studied horticulture and plantsmanship as a second career. After visiting York Gate garden while at college, she decided that when she finished her studies she would volunteer there, and this she has done.

Saving Denmans

In 1980 John Brookes moved to Denmans, a West Sussex property that became not only his home but also his garden design school and experimental garden. The first part of this talk details the early history of the nineteenth-century site, once the home of the Denman family, and then the development of a market garden and later an ornamental garden by the Robinsons in the early post-war decades. Mrs Robinson’s innovative gravel garden formed the basis of Brookes’s garden, which introduced a stronger design, a pool to culminate the dry gravel streams and additional native and exotic plants. These experiments paralleled the design and planting concepts used in his clients’ gardens and those he outlined in articles, lectures and his books. In the four years before Brookes’s death in March 2018, Denmans went through a critical and potentially high-risk period. The second part of this talk focuses on the efforts to restore the garden starting in December 2017, how these efforts evolved after Brookes’s death and, looking to the future, what historic resources will be used to help create a conservation plan for the future. 

Dr Barbara Simms is a garden and landscape historian, who has been Course Director of the MA in Garden and Landscape History at the Institute of Historical Research since its inception in 2014.  She was chair of London Parks & Gardens Trust (2002-8), a trustee of The Garden Museum (2002-14), and chair of Parks & Gardens UK (2012-18). She has been editor of Garden History, the journal of The Gardens Trust (previously the Garden History Society) since 2004. Dr Simms’s interest in the history, conservation and interpretation of gardens of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries has led to the completion of research commissions on post-war landscapes, journal articles and the publication of two books, Eric Lyons and Span (2006) and John Brookes, Garden and Landscape Designer (2007).  

Gwendolyn van Paasschen is a garden designer and writer. Having worked with John Brookes on a major multi-year project in Upstate New York, she helped him write his memoir, A Landscape Legacy (Pimpernel Press, 2018), and now is chairman of the John Brookes-Denmans Foundation (JBDF) which she co-founded in 2017. The JBDF is dedicated to perpetuating John Brookes’s design legacy and to the renovation and preservation of Denmans Garden, his garden in West Sussex. She currently owns and runs Denmans Garden, which includes a plant centre and retail space. She is also a contributor to the Georgetown Dish, a daily news and entertainment site, writing occasional articles about gardening and garden design.  Ms van Paasschen has compiled and edited How to Design a Garden, a forthcoming book of writings by John Brookes, published by Pimpernel Press (October 2021).   

The Beth Chatto Gardens, Past, Present and Future

Who was Beth Chatto and what inspired her to create a series of gardens and a perennial plant nursery?  David Ward has been working at these gardens for 38 years, and has witnessed and been hands on shaping the growth and development of the different garden zones - from wet to dry, open to exposed.  How will the character and dynamics of this garden continue without its original maker? What difference does it make to this garden having it on Historic England’s register?

Dr Chris Gibson states that Beth’s mantra of ‘Right Plant, Right Place’ is not just about the practice of gardening plants. It is also reference to the network of beneficiaries of the right plants in the right places – insects, birds, mammals, indeed the whole spectrum of biodiversity. All gardens support wildlife, but some are better than others, and he believe because of the steps we have taken towards sustainability, this garden is better than most. This talk will look at some of the wildlife surprises in our garden, and the steps we have taken to improve it still further.

David Ward is the Garden and Nursery Director at The Beth Chatto Gardens and Trustee of the Beth Chatto Education Trust. He trained at the Norfolk College of Agriculture and Horticulture and Merrist Wood College, studying nursery practice and worked on various wholesale and retail nurseries in the UK and Holland. He joined Beth in 1983 and became Propagation Manager. He assisted at four Chelsea Gold Medal exhibits and recently contributed extra chapters to reprints of Beth Chatto’s Drought-resistant planting, Beth Chatto’s Woodland Garden and The Green Tapestry revisited. 

Dr Chris Gibson is an experienced naturalist who worked his whole career in the statutory wing of nature conservation. Since taking early retirement, he has continued to promote wildlife, especially in Essex, and for the past year has been proud to act as the Beth Chatto Gardens Wildlife Advocate, advising and enthusing staff and visitors alike of the biodiversity riches to be found in a sustainably managed garden: showing the world what is possible is an important step to changing hearts and minds. 

A Water Garden and its lost Landscape Architect

When trying to understand the history of the tiny courtyard at the Sanderson Hotel, Dominic Cole found out the planting had been designed by Philip Hicks and that another of his schemes was the water gardens in Edgware Road, so had to visit - it was a revelation to discover this remarkable landscape of levels, planes, water and delightful planting. The use of space, textures and light was amazing. Attempts to ‘update‘ paving and planting have begun to erode the simplicity and beauty of the original design.

Jan Woudstra shows that the Water Garden at Burwood Place was part of a movement that saw its roots in the 19th century re-imagination of the ‘Hanging Gardens of Babylon’. These iconic gardens were also a starting point as techniques improved, with the use of concrete and steel, for roof gardens. In the 20th century they were used as a reference to platform gardens, most famously in the raised decks of the architecture of futuristic cities. But what did these decks set out to do? What kinds of environments were envisaged? Burwood Place is but one of a whole series of responses. What was the intention here and what can we learn about life as it was supposed to be lived? What has happened since it was completed, with our perspective on how life is to be lived, and with this garden as a result? How can this garden be read today?

Cristina Refolo will provide an introduction to the restoration and rejuvenation of The Water Gardens, the design ethos, and the decisions made during the design process. Cristina will be talking about the rediscovery of the original relationship between the planters and the pond, and the intrinsic connection between the water and the concrete, which makes The Water Gardens a much more innovative and technologically advanced scheme than expected. In 2020 the restored scheme was presented with the Susdrain/Criria SuDS Small Scale Retrofit Award and The Landscape Institute Excellence in Horticulture and Planting Design Award.  

Dominic Cole is a Landscape Architect and President of the Gardens Trust. He was the designer of the Eden Project, and now specialises in historic parks and gardens for which he has won many prestigious awards. Amongst other projects, he has worked with National Trust on Chartwell, Wimpole and Sheringham, the impact of HS2 on Bucks landscapes, management plans for Hampstead Heath and played a vital role in the restoration of Jellicoe’s water gardens at Hemel Hempstead. His recent investigations include the historical development of the Gardens at The Temple, and the original designs for the landscape of Churchill Gardens in Pimlico.

Jan Woudstra is a landscape architect and historian who has taught in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield since 1995. His PhD at UCL explored the modernist landscape design and theory in five different countries, and concentrated particularly on the landscape associated with the home. He has published widely, not just concentrating on landscape modernism.

Cristina Refolo is a landscape architect and founding Director of Refolo Landscape Architects. She is appointed to the High Street Task Force for the stormwater management and biodiversity sector and regularly lectures on the subject of SuDS for the Landscape Architecture MA course at the University of Greenwich, London

Fieldend, Teddington (1961), a Span Housing Development: an International Context

When a group of young, well-informed and idealistic architect-designers and developers founded Span in the early 1950s their vision was to 'span the gap between the suburban monotony of the typical speculative development and the architecturally designed, individually built residence that has become (for all but few) financially unattainable’. It set out to create an inspiring environment and provide an alternative way of life that promoted a community spirit. While the British context of this has been well explored in Barbara Simms's Eric Lyons and Span (2006), by selecting one of their developments at Fieldend, Jan Woudstra compares and contrasts some selected international theories and examples regarding landscapes for housing, and the way they foresaw design for community development. This is contrasted with some remarks on present-day housing. 

James Strike will discuss how the landscape of Fieldend influences the way residents of the estate live and interact. As there are 51 houses, there are invariably various opinions as to how the landscape is managed and what is planted.  He will talk of the joys and benefits of living at Fieldend; how the layout and landscape led to everyone knowing each other, how it encourages children to play safely and the many community events of garden parties, music recitals, croquet and carol singing.  James will also speak about the conflicts which arise, such as the size of the trees, children's toys, the need for more colour, and the extent of meadow grass. 

Jan Woudstra is a landscape architect and historian who has taught in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield since 1995. His PhD at UCL explored the modernist landscape design and theory in five different countries, and concentrated particularly on the landscape associated with the home. He has published widely, not just concentrating on landscape modernism.

James Strike is a retired architect having worked in private practice and at English Heritage. He has lived with his wife at Fieldend for twenty years. James has written several books including: Architecture in Conservation: Managing Development at Historic Sites, and the spirit of span housing.

Arne Jacobsen and the 'Total Design’ of St Catherine’s College, Oxford

Having written books on the gardens of both universities, Tim Richardson describes St Catherine’s (universally known as St Catz) as the premier modernist exercise among the Oxbridge colleges. In this talk he describes the genesis of the design and Jacobsen’s uncompromising approach to every detail. The design is unusual in that Jacobsen oversaw both building and landscape in a spirit of complete equality, lending the whole a balance and seamlessness which is rare indeed. Nevertheless, our speaker has certain reservations about the result, in terms of its fitness for purpose as a college and as a home for students.

Tim Richardson is a garden and landscape historian and critic and the author of a number of books including The Arcadian Friends: The Invention of the English Landscape Garden, Avant Gardeners and The New English Garden, as well as books on the gardens of both Oxford and Cambridge. He is a columnist on the Daily Telegraph, art critic for The Idler magazine and formerly gardens editor at Country Life. He teaches landscape history at London University and wrote Oxford University's course on English garden history. He is founder-director of the Chelsea Fringe Festival.

Regrettably for copyright reasons this video recording is not available for public viewing

The John F Kennedy Memorial: Stories from the Archives

The huge Portland stone slab that forms the John F Kennedy Memorial was listed Grade ll in 1998. It is located on the fringe of a finger of woodland and set in an ‘acre of Runnymede’ on grazing land rising above the meadow. It is this, the rest of the site that was recently added to Historic England’s register, although it is surely hard to find a design that is not more integrated with its landscape. The JFK Memorial soon became a celebrated landscape design, it was significant to Jellicoe’s career, and it has continued to attract widespread interest and praise. Like one of the swans gliding on the Thames below, however, many feet have paddled hard to help both create and keep this designed landscape sublime, and Annabel Downs will tell some of the stories that are part of its history.

In her capacity as Secretary to the Kennedy Memorial Trust, Annie Thomas liaised between the Kennedy Trustees and the National Trust as they cared for Jellicoe’s memorial ‘in landscape and stone’ at Runnymede.  As an administrator, albeit with a rural heart and heritage, she describes her working relationship with those employed by the National Trust to care for the whole of the Runnymede site and some of the issues they had to contend with in relation to the Kennedy Memorial.

Annabel Downs is a landscape architect and garden designer; she unexpectedly helped to establish the Landscape Institute archive following the gift of a plan chest full of drawings from Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe. She is currently chair of FOLAR and as part of a growing band of enthusiasts, we are helping to raise public awareness about the many qualities of C20 landscape design and their industrious creators.  

Annie Thomas read English at Bristol University in the early 1970s. After almost thirty years bringing up a family of four and supporting her husband in inner-urban Anglican parishes, she found herself in paid employment at Goodenough College in a multi-faceted role with international postgraduate students in London and was subsequently Secretary to the Kennedy Memorial Trust from 2007 until 2019.

Roper’s Garden: a Meeting of Form, Function and Art

Originally Sir Thomas More’s orchard in the early 16thC, this is a modern urban space built in the aftermath of WW2. The buildings on the site were destroyed in 1941 and it remained essentially derelict until the 1960s. Peter Shepheard developed a sensitive and understated design utilising the basements of the destroyed buildings to provide a sheltered and sunken garden. There are distinctive Shepheard elements such as path and kerb details often found in his other designs; a strong geometry of spatial form, and restrained planting of a knowledgeable plantsman. His love of nature, particularly birds, is seen in the bird boxes around the walls.  Seating, shelter and ease of access are key functional elements. Shepheard uses All Saints Church as a focal point outside of the site, while centre-stage is The Awakening by Gilbert Ledward. An unfinished sculpture by Jacob Epstein lies hidden, awaiting to be discovered by visitors.

Ed Bennis was Head of the School of Landscape at Manchester Metropolitan University and Head of the Centre for Landscape Research. He has been a landscape consultant to English Heritage and regional governments, and has held numerous positions on regional and national bodies including Green Flag Judge, CABE/Civic Trust, chairman and trustee of Cheshire Gardens Trust. He has been a visiting professor in Haifa, Beijing and Guangzhou, and University of Novi Sad, Serbia.

A People's Arcadia: The Ian Hamilton Finlay Garden at Luton

The IHF garden at Stockwood, commissioned and funded by the local council, is a complete programme of sculptures designed by Ian Hamilton Finlay and complemented by planting by Bob Burgoyne, Master Gardener at the council and very much in sympathy with Finlay's vision. The site is not only in a public park, but also an 18th century parkland. The garden draws on the work of Claude Lorraine and the English Landscape Movement and is imbued with the classical world of deities drawn from Ovid's Metamorphoses. This talk looks at the commissioning of the garden, its influences, other examples in Finlay's oeuvre and its importance, culminating with it being added to the Register in 2020 by Historic England at Grade II*. Luton Culture, who run the garden, have set up a small group to promote its rejuvenation with the help of HE and the speaker.

Kate Harwood has been involved with this garden for many years, researching and raising awareness of its significance. She is Conservation & Planning Officer of Hertfordshire Gardens Trust and a member of The Gardens Trust Conservation Committee.  She has an MA in Garden History from Birkbeck and taught on their certificate course, and at ICE Cambridge for several years.  She now lectures, writes and researches garden history as well as helping residents of Hertfordshire to protect and enhance our historic parks and gardens.

Regrettably for copyright reasons this video recording is not available for public viewing