NURTURE
PLANNING CHANGE AND
C H AN G ING PL ANN I NG A
LEWIS NORMAND SAYS MORE CAREFUL CONSIDERATION IS NEEDED FOR INCORPORATING LANDSCAPE INTO HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS
t the end of 2019, I made a series of predictions for horticulture, garden design and gardening for 2020 on my blog. One subject that I predicted was that 2020 will be the first year in which we approach large scale landscaping in a thoughtful and cohesive manner. The more I have considered this subject, the more important it becomes as a tool to ensure we can design and build our necessary future housing expansion in a measured way. In doing this, we must ensure that planned developments include adequate and futureproofed infrastructure, ranging from transport links to communication, hospitals, services, schools and more to accommodate population growth. Currently, and sadly, these developments typically come at the price of lost landscape. Done well, though, they can easily enough become diverse, valuable contributors to habitat, food and wellbeing for the residents and wildlife in the area. This must be in the forefront of our minds when designing future developments – it has been in the thoughts of our best designers for some time now. Garden cities have great potential, but represent a small amount of new developments.
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Future building will likely focus on extending cities before developing the countryside. A better, legislated approach detailing the requirements of developers and approving councils is needed to ensure landscape design is a primary concern and not an opportunity to save on budget later in an overrunning project. We must ensure that developments enhance our landscape, contribute to our environment and help us link expanding areas meaningfully
WE SHOULD HAVE A STRONGER COLLECTIVE VISION … WHEN IT COMES TO PLANNING OUR BUILDING AND LANDSCAPE STRATEGIES rather than disparately. Having myriad builders developing patches of towns, expanding villages and reforming areas of cities with easily ignored planning strategies failing to adequately consider purpose, the greater environment and sympathetic aesthetic is a huge weakness in our approach. I am in no way suggesting that we adopt a homogeneous approach to design, awkwardly forcing away a creative hand in place of hugely restrictive controls – though I do believe that the relatively untempered approach we have towards unsympathetic planning is deeply unhelpful. New England style painted timber
buildings may be something you enjoy, but is it appropriate in the Kent countryside? We should question the direction we are allowing our architecture and landscape design to take us. Instead of forcing prescriptive design, which is equally as unhelpful to encourage, we should have a stronger collective vision for our aims and objectives when it comes to planning our building and landscape strategies. Design that strays from local and historical vernacular ideals should be more readily questioned to determine its complementary value. Far too many buildings of questionable architectural merit are produced across the UK – these give little or no value to the environment and hugely devalue the examples of great sympathetic design that professionals aspire to create. As always, there will not and indeed should not be an individual who can be our aesthetic arbiter, but I think we should collectively push for planning strategies and legislation both locally and nationally that bring value to our world, not simply more houses.
ABOUT LEWIS NORMAND Lewis has worked in a wide variety of roles within horticulture over a 20-year career. He has lectured on garden design and horticulture, and designed gardens in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. Since 2011, Lewis has focused on nursery sales, now working as sales manager at Bernhard’s Nurseries, and has helped to launch a number of new plants into the UK plant market. He is a specialist supplier to show gardens, supplying over 100 gardens at major shows.
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20/01/2020 11:23