Blue Plaques Blues

Just 14% of Blue Plaques have been awarded to women and within this number, none has been awarded to a landscape architect.

In 2018, Blue Plaques were turned down for Dame Sylvia Crowe and Branda Colvin. If successful, the plaques would have been placed on the office that they had shared in Marylebone in west London.

Blue Plaques in London have been awarded by English Heritage since 1986 (previously they were awarded by the Royal Society of Arts, London County Council and Greater London Council). The scheme started in 1866 and has been replicated with similar schemes across the country. Outside London, local authorities and civic societies across the UK award Blue Plaques, some schemes of which are registered with English Heritage, such as the Gateshead scheme.

In London, the Blue Plaque scheme identifies the buildings in which ‘notable figures’ from the past lived and worked. Key criteria for proposing a Blue Plaque are that twenty years must have passed since the candidate’s death, at least one building associated with the nominee must exist within Greater London (barring the City of London, which has its own scheme) and in a form that the nominee would recognise, as well as being visible from a public highway.

The Blue Plaque scheme welcomes proposals from the public, which are then considered by their Panel. The current Panel is made up of 11 individuals who will consider proposals, though from cursory research it is unclear whether an English Heritage staff team assess and shortlist nominations in advance of the Panel seeing them. The proposal forms ask for information about the ‘the life and achievements of the person’ being proposed, as well as why the proposer believes ‘this person deserves a plaque, and how they meet the following selection criteria’.

The selection criteria cover the nominee’s contribution to human welfare and happiness; their exceptional impact in terms of public recognition; and the grounds for their being regarded eminent and distinguished by a majority of members of their own profession or calling. And in items one and two of this list lies the rub for a landscape architect.

The mark of a good landscape scheme is where you cannot readily see where the landscape architect had been at work.

It is both the point and the frustration of the vast majority of landscape architects’ work that, at its best, it does not call attention to itself and therefore their work is highly unlikely to meet the condition of public recognition. Not for the landscape architect, the edifice that reaches to the sky or that shimmers with endless panes of glass. Instead, in Sylvia Crowe’s own words, “the mark of a good landscape scheme is where you cannot readily see where the landscape architect had been at work.” Furthermore, “we are trying to make a land which people can enjoy, a land, too, where wildlife can flourish.”1

The impact of these two landscape architects on the built environment and on the profession is not in doubt. However, for the wider public, the breadth and scope of their work, from private garden to townscapes and infrastructure landscapes, and their legacy in terms of thinking and practise, must be preserved and promoted.

However, as it currently defines value of public recognition, there is a long road to travel before these two truly extraordinary landscape architects get the respect they deserve with a Blue Plaque. Making your mark in a way that the public will confer fame and/or value is not, currently, within easy scope of a landscape architect’s work.

There are, of course, exceptions. Charles Bridgeman, Capability Brown, John and Jane Loudon and Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe all have Blue Plaques marking where they lived in London. While there is no ‘landscape’ category, they each fall under the ‘gardening’ one, with only Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe being identified as a landscape architect, and the others being associated with landscape gardening. This is problematic in itself – if the only way to recognise a landscape architect’s work is through seeing it executed within the field of gardening, how should work like forests, woodlands, reservoirs, and large infrastructure sites be acknowledged that does not fall within that category?

While it is impossible to know what evidence of ‘impact in terms of public recognition’ and ‘contribution to human welfare and happiness’ was provided in their proposals, there is a clear commonality across the work of all of these individuals. They all designed landscapes attached to the homes of the wealthy and landed gentry – in short, their gardens.

Even Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, while not primarily known among the landscape profession for his work in this area, has the rose garden at Cliveden, St Paul’s Walden Bury, Hartwell House and Sutton Place listed among his key works.

Unlike the majority of open spaces that landscape architects design, in keeping with Sylvia Crowe’s maxim of work that does not call attention to itself, these grand places are designed to be admired, in craft and impact, even when using the artifice of ‘appearing natural’ to achieve this effect. This approach is most humorously summed up in Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia, when the fictional character Lady Croom says of her Brown-designed landscape ‘Sidley Park is already a picture, and a most amiable picture too. The slopes are green and gentle. The trees are companiably grouped…The rill is a serpentine ribbon peaceably contained by meadows on which the right amount of sheep are tastefully arranged – in short it is nature as God intended…’.

Aside from the attention-calling character of these landscapes, there is another aspect to why designers of these places invite notice and acclaim more easily. They are the landscapes we are biased to appreciate. In a previous issue of Landscape 2, I quoted Kofi Boone, Professor of Landscape Architecture at NC State University, who points out that “...we have an implicit professional bias toward not only European landscape, but privileged European landscapes.” I would argue, however, that it is not just a professional bias, it is a societal one. We are conditioned to give value to the gardens of a stately home or private squares of a West London borough in a way we would not dream of ascribing value to the functional, landscapes of a nuclear power station or the everyday landscape of a muchloved local park.

This is not to say that neither Sylvia Crowe nor Brenda Colvin designed for the wealthy and the prominent properties of the UK, or that Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe’s equally notable work that did not involve such landscapes were not recognised. But there is an additional hurdle that women have to clear. And that is the simple fact of being a woman at all.

Since the scheme’s inception in 1866 ... 14% of Blue Plaques have been awarded to women.

It has long been identified that women’s work goes unnoticed and, therefore, unrewarded. The traditional roles of care giving, child raising, and home making are all taken entirely for granted – unremunerated and most certainly not celebrated. Giving birth, dressing, washing, tending to the sick and vulnerable, cooking, feeding and cleaning were, and still are for many households, just natural facts of life that ‘happen’. The immense dedication, skill, commitment and practiced expertise involved is taken entirely for granted. It is work we overlook because it is so much a part of our everyday, and so vital to our survival, we default to thinking it happens naturally and requires no effort at all, much like the planning, design and management of our landscapes.

Even where women have blazed what should be paths of glory in fields, they have historically been kept from entering, any kind of public acknowledgment has been withheld. (Ada Lovelace anyone? Or Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson whose mathematical skills helped NASA win the space race? Not to mention potentially millions of others lost to history). And we see this again with the decision not to award Sylvia Crowe and Brenda Colvin Blue Plaques when they were nominated for recognition.

This 2018 decision is a matter or real regret and, as this article hopefully makes clear, the impact is that an opportunity has been lost to make a wider public aware of their considerable contribution to the profession, to England and society. While I maintain that there should be persistence with this, by reapplying when possible, I would also argue that it is time that we no longer rely on long-established processes and bodies alone to help tell landscape architects’ stories.

We now have more power than ever in which to ensure that legacies are not just recognised but made. Websites such as Wikipedia, blogs and podcasts and posts on social media – put power in the hands of people to celebrate the individuals they decide deserve time and respect. Ada Lovelace may not be in the mainstream but has long been recognised through patient campaigning. Similarly, the book, followed by the film, Hidden Figures brought the stories of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson at NASA to a mass audience. It was through a video on Tik Tok that I discovered that Hedy Lamarr was an inventor, whose work is incorporated into Bluetooth and GPS technology, including the invention of WiFi.

We can wait for the Blue Plaques scheme to catch up with what the landscape profession knows about the value of celebrating Sylvia Crowe and Brenda Colvin but we can also ensure that while we wait, their story, and that of other brilliant people are told in a variety of public-facing ways.

Since the scheme’s inception in 1866...14% of Blue Plaques have been awarded to women.

And there is hope here. This year, when the Blue Plaque scheme ‘aims to tell the stories of London’s working class with its 2022 awards’3 Fanny Wilkinson will be recognised as Britain’s first professional female landscape gardener. Her achievements include public gardens across London – she served as landscape gardener to the Kyrie Society, which aimed to ‘bring beauty to the lives of the poor’.4 While perhaps a patronising sentiment, there is no doubt that it is wonderful to celebrate the practice of someone whose work had its greatest impact on those without financial advantage and privilege. Someone extraordinary, using their skill and creativity to create public benefit for the ordinary. Someone just like Sylvia Crowe and Brenda Colvin.

Sabina Mohideen

Sabina Mohideen is a freelance programme manager, with a background in EDI, events and change management.

1. Both quotes from https://wwwarchitectural review.com/essays/reputations/sylviacrowe-1901-1997.

2. Black Landscapes Matter pp.70-71, Landscape, Issue 1-2022

3. https://perspectivemag.co.uk/english-blue-plaques-to-tellworking-classstories/

4. https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Fanny_ Wilkinson