Landscape Journal - Summer 2015

Landscape The Journal of the Landscape Institute

Summer 2015

Celebrating public space Public sector in Sunderland / 49 Public realm in London / 8 Brenda Colvin archive / 59

landscapeinstitute.org Landscape Summer 2015

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DESIGN TANK PHOTO CHARLOTTE SVERDRUP

Enjoying the outdoors since 1947

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Landscape Summer 2015

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Vestre Bloc Sun Design: Atle Tveit & Lars Tornøe Landscaping: LINK

Editorial

evident for example at the former Athletes’ Village at the Olympic Park where all the blocks were fundamentally the same, just ‘dressed’ in different ways (often very successfully) by different architects.

What really mattered was the disposition of the blocks and the spaces that were created between them.

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Let’s spare a thought for architects t ime to feel sorry for architects? It is true that they have the toughest deal of many professionals. Their pay is low, their hours are long, their education expensive and they have little job security. In addition, the status of architects in the construction industry has declined over the past few decades, with the rise of design and build and of project management.

IS IT

Photo ©: 1 – Agnese Sanvito

But if the world in general should sympathise, it is harder to expect landscape professionals to do so.

After all, architecture is the senior profession, with a longer-established institution than landscape. There are many more architects than landscape professionals.

Courses are more numerous than those for landscape and, unlike landscape, they are over-subscribed.

The public may only be able to name a handful of living architects, but it would struggle to identify a single representative of the landscape professions – a TV gardener is the best we could hope for.

This may be about to change, however. Noel Farrer’s update on housing on page 11 addresses an area where architects’ influence is often minimal. There is good architect-designed housing, including in one of the case studies that Noel presents. But there is a limit to how much architects can do, given the tightness of budgets and the commonality of needs. There are only so many ways to arrange a few spaces. This was

It is this public realm, Noel argues, that is really important for the success of the places where we live. It is where we have all our social interactions, where we travel and exercise and receive our visual and sensory impressions. And it is, of course, the province of the landscape professional. Similarly, Merrick Denton-Thompson in his introduction to our piece on the work of Sunderland council (page 49) argues that ‘We should be repositioning the landscape profession to ensure our democratic system has direct, impartial advice from the landscape profession.’ And in her feature on St Peter’s Seminary (page 34) Carine Brennan shows how a landscape-led approach is helping to find a new function for a much-loved but troublesome building.

Good buildings will always be important and heartlifting. But with environmental and population pressures, the landscape in which they sit will be even more vital. Unlike most buildings, which are at their best at the moment of completion, well-considered landscape should improve over time. While the question ‘who designed this building?’ is an obvious one with a straightforward answer, it will not even occur to many to ask ‘who designed this landscape?’. But the landscape professional’s ability to work with past and present, with what is there and what is wanted, to tackle ecological and hydrological and social issues all within one space is just what we need.

The statement in our last issue, made by Nigel Spiller, professor of architecture and digital theory at the university of Greenwich, ‘Architecture is a subset of landscape,’ will become increasingly evidently true. Architects, as the great generalists and coordinators, may be the first violinists in the orchestras of the future – with landscape architects as the conductors.

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Landscape Contents

The Journal of the Landscape Institute

Editor Ruth Slavid landscape@darkhorsedesign.co.uk Editorial advisory panel Tim Waterman, honorary editor David Buck Joe Clancy Edwin Knighton CMLI Amanda McDermott Peter Sheard CMLI John Stuart Murray FLI Eleanor Trenfield CMLI Jo Watkins PPLI Jenifer White CMLI Jill White CMLI Landscape Institute president Noel Farrer PLI Landscape Institute CEO Phil Mulligan To comment on any aspect of Landscape Institute communications please contact: Paul Lincoln, deputy CEO paull@landscapeinstitute.org

––– Follow the Landscape Institute on twitter: @talklandscape Advertising, subscription and membership enquiries: www.landscapeinstitute.org/contact ––– The Landscape Institute is the royal chartered institute for landscape architects.

Regulars Let’s spare a thought for architects

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Plastic deformation

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Update

Public London

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Update

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Home spaces

Technical

Fundamentals of tree pit soils

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Sporting life As a nation, we need and want to get fitter. But what impact can the landscape have on these desires, and what impact does our interest in fitness and sport have on the landscape?

Practice

Public sector, public space: Working for Sunderland

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Culture

Brenda Colvin archive

A word

Inevitable

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The views expressed in this journal are those of the contributors and advertisers and not necessarily those of the Landscape Institute, Darkhorse or the Editorial Advisory Panel. While every effort has been made to check the accuracy and validity of the information given in this publication, neither the Institute nor the Publisher accept any responsibility for the subsequent use of this information, for any errors or omissions that it may contain, or for any misunderstandings arising from it.

Landscape is the official journal of the Landscape Institute, ISSN: 1742–2914 ©2015 Landscape Institute. Landscape is published four times a year by Darkhorse Design.

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Landscape Summer 2015

Bigger picture

As a professional body and educational charity, it works to protect, conserve and enhance the natural and built environment for the public benefit.

––– Landscape is printed on FSC paper obtained from a sustainable and well managed source, using environmentally friendly vegetable oil based ink.

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Editorial

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Features

Photo ©: 1 – Paul Raftery Photo ©: 2 – Virtual Planit courtesy of Surf Snowdonia

Publisher Darkhorse Design Ltd 42 Hamilton Square, Birkenhead Wirral, Merseyside. CH41 5BP T 0151 649 9669 www.darkhorsedesign.co.uk

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Revelling in ruins

Photo ©: 3, 4, 5 – Arup Associates Photo ©: 6 – Cristina Armstrong courtesy of NVA

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Lush, listed and loved The listing of Gateway House in Basingstoke provides a great opportunity to revisit the thinking behind one of the earliest uses of green roofs.

Landscape will be the catalyst for the revitalisation of the admired but ruined St Peter’s Seminary on the outskirts of Glasgow. ERZ has come up with a masterplan for the landscape that is unusually fluid and focuses on engagement and interaction rather than a range of fixed features.

Landscape The Journal of the Landscape Institute

Summer 2015

Celebrating public space Public sector in Sunderland / 49 Public realm in London / 8 Brenda Colvin archive / 59

landscapeinstitute.org Landscape Summer 2015

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Cover image – composite of elements from this issue demonstrating public space and public sector. © Greysmith Associates Ltd © Landscape Institute / MERL © Sunderland City Council © Farrer Huxley Associates © Virtual Planit courtesy of Surf Snowdonia

Landscape Summer 2015

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Bigger Picture

By Ruth Slavid

Plastic deformation

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Image ©: – Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto / Flowers, London

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his intriguing patchwork quilt is a photograph taken near Almeria in southern Spain, by renowned Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky.

Known for his large-format images of industrial landscapes, Burtynsky groups his work into series, and this image comes from the agriculture section of his ‘Water’ series.

He writes ‘Agriculture represents – by far – the largest human activity upon the planet. Approximately seventy percent of all fresh water under our control is dedicated to this activity.’

This photograph – beautiful but of an ugly place – belies any idea that agriculture is necessarily ‘natural’.

The hot climate of the area made it a pioneer of ‘plastication’ and one of the densest users of it, creating a landscape for producing early fruit and vegetables.

Commercially the area has been hugely successful but at a cost in terms of pollution, amenity and the treatment of migrant workers. Burtynsky’s photograph shows that the demands of commercial agriculture may not merely have an impact on, but can transform, a landscape.

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Update

By Ruth Slavid

Public London A code of practice for public space and enhanced expertise in placemaking are among the recommendations of a report that looks back on 10 years of public space in the capital and considers the best approach for the future.

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ublic space is arguably the most important element of a city. It is where people interact, the space that they travel through and, to a very large extent, the determinant of their quality of life. And nowhere is the quality of this space more important than in a major city where the area, the numbers and the complexity are at their greatest.

So it made sense for New London Architecture, for its tenth anniversary, to revisit the subject of its very first exhibition, public space in the capital, and to see how it had changed over that decade. In addition to an exhibition, ‘Public London: Ten years of transforming public spaces’, which runs until 11 July at The Building Centre, the organisation has undertaken an insight study to look in more detail at how the city has changed and to make recommendations for the future.

It notes the changes that have happened over the period of study, including the fact that ‘Green space and green infrastructure have become essential parts of creating a liveable city, bringing a wealth 8

Landscape Summer 2015

of environmental benefits such as reducing the urban heat island effect, air cooling, absorbing pollutants and promoting biodiversity. Alongside this, the transfer of public health responsibilities to local authorities in 2013 has led to a much increased focus on the benefits of green space in particular for both physical and mental health and wellbeing for children and adults.’

It looks at both high-profile successes, such as the Olympic Park and King’s Cross, and also at smaller, incremental changes which, it says, ‘has been more significant in some ways than the major signature projects.

Public space improvements over the last decade have not only supported London’s economic growth but also enhanced its character as a ‘permeable’ city – through unlocking inaccessible courtyards and alleyways, creating new routes and connections, and overhauling rundown, un-attractive, crime-ridden and derelict spaces.’

The study looks not only at what has happened and is happening, but also at the mechanisms that bring it

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New London Architecture supports the creation of clear guidelines about the use of POPS. The Greater London Assembly report Public Life in Private Hands of 2011 called for clear guidance on how boroughs could approach the provision and design of public realm and how subsequent management

1 – Architect Dixon Jones designed the pioneering shared space at Exhibition Road in Kensington 2 – The Leadenhall Building, designed

by Rogers Stirk Harbour, gives public space back to the city. Edco Design London was the landscape architect.

Image ©: 2 – Paul Raftery

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about – at policy and at the different ways of funding public space in the capital. Looking forward, it says, ‘Alongside more intense pressure on the use of public space will be the exacting challenge of continuing to fund, deliver and manage high-quality projects in order to build on the successes of the past decade. Funding will be an especially difficult obstacle owing to the drastic cuts in local authority budgets, and the private sector will play an even more significant role as services are outsourced.’

In the light of this, the study makes four recommendations.

1. London needs a code of practice to ensure public space is public for all Over the last few years there has been considerable debate about the accessibility and use of privately owned public space (POPS). The complex patchwork of land and property ownership in London means that over London’s history many public spaces we perceive as public are in fact owned by estates, charitable trusts, the church or developers. What matters, we believe, is not who owns the space, but how it is managed and maintained.

Image ©: 4 – Paul Raftery 5 – Toby Smith 6 – Stanton Williams: Gillespies

3 – KSR Architects won a competition to design this pavilion for the first Camden Create Festival temporary uses are becoming increasingly important.

4 – The fountains at Granary Square, King’s Cross, an entirely new and very successful public space.

Designed by Townshend Landscape Architects.

5 – LDA Design recycled spoil from Wembley Stadium and Westfield shopping centre to create Northala Fields Park in Ealing. Gillespies was the landscape architect 6 – The new urban realm for St Giles’, around Centre Point.

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responsibilities can be negotiated between boroughs and developers; model planning and legal conditions and model clauses for Section 106, Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) and similar agreements. Matthew Carmona, professor of planning and urban design at the Bartlett School of Planning at UCL has proposed a form of words that could be used by local authorities to ensure that new public space delivered by both the public and private sectors is kept public for all.

Carmona proposes that: ‘Without let or hindrance all public space users have the right to roam freely, rest and relax, associate with others, use public space in a lawful manner without the imposition of local controls unless strictly justified, for example on drinking, smoking, safe cycling, skating, and dog walking, collect for registered charities, take photographs, trade (if granted a public licence), demonstrate peacefully and campaign politically, busk or otherwise perform (in appropriate non residential locations).’

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2. London needs more expertise in ‘placemaking’ Public realm is delivered by a myriad of different stakeholders from architects to landscape architects, highways engineers to business organisations, creating a complex set of negotiations and interests. But who is championing the quality and identity of place? As has been advocated by the Farrell Review, the built environment industry needs to develop more expertise in ‘placemaking’. Public realm, when considered at the start of a project, can be a key driver in stimulating wider placemaking activity and generating civic identity.

As expertise in public realm and urban design is being lost in the public sector due to funding cuts, skills in this area must also be developed and shared to give planning authorities confidence in enabling high-quality development

and investment in public realm and embedding a strategic approach.

3. Utility companies should not be allowed to ‘wreck’ the public realm All too often, London’s streets are dug up or closed off by utilities companies, causing disruption and lower-quality replacement works. London needs to develop more strategic city-wide coordination of work by utilities companies. Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) should be given more powers to coordinate and ensure a higher quality finish or replacement.

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4. More innovative solutions are needed to deliver better public space in low-cost areas While major regeneration areas of London and central investment zones continue to see investment going into public realm, more innovation is needed in generating and combining funding streams to ensure adequate investment in lower-cost areas of the capital. This is equally important to support long-term maintenance and management. As London continues to grow, there is still huge potential in upgrading atypical spaces, underground and on top of buildings, railway arches, and on infill sites.

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The exhibition runs until 11 July 2015 at NLA Galleries, The Building Centre, 26 Store Street, London WC1E 7BT Landscape Summer 2015

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By Noel Farrer

Home spaces Housing is one of the major concerns of LI President Noel Farrer, and he is deeply engaged both at policy level and in the work of his practice, Farrer Huxley Associates. Here he explains how he believes landscape professionals could improve housing to create a sense of community and shares some examples from his practice.

1 – Dover Court Estate in London has a landscapeled approach which should be used more widely.

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Image ©: 1 – Farrer Huxley Associates

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h e global population is growing rapidly and my generation has witnessed the tipping point into a world that is predominantly urbanised. This puts pressure on resources, energy and infrastructure. The economic, environmental and housing crises are all problems of urbanisation.

Humanity has always faced crises of one sort or another, but is there anything we can do as these multiple global challenges appear to collide?

Many people talk about a general malaise in today’s society over individual political activism and how people feel overwhelmingly disillusioned. The reason for this is complex, but it has something to do with our democratic structures not being democratic enough. People do not feel they have a voice that

will be heard or the power to bring about change.

Talking to many young people in the landscape profession, there seems to be a disconnect between the ideas and principles that they learn in college and the professional practice they engage in. What is the relationship between ideas and action? There are countless historical precedents where ideas have gained sufficient momentum to bring about large-scale action. I believe that we are at a point in history when we need this kind of change. The current systems do not work and the consequences of continuing on this trajectory are too great to ignore. How do we get to the point of action? Kelvin Campbell believes it takes a ‘Massive Small’ approach – a deluge of small changes that harness a collective power to bring big difference. Many of us know

that we want change, but sometimes it is hard to know what the right kind of change looks like.

Let’s take the housing crisis as an example; building on the green belt or on greenfield sites seems a straightforward approach when we need so many houses in such a short space of time. But this applies a simple solution to a complex problem. The government is looking for short-term results in the form of volume housing developments, for the primary benefit of its political status. As with any blunt instrument, the long-term prognosis is not good. The implications of this approach are on a scale not yet understood. If we did understand them, we would not stand for it.

The row upon row of sprawling, bland houses that are currently being built on the edges of towns lack any /...

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Case Study Barrow Maritime Streets – Barrow in Furness, Cumbria In 2013 Barrow Borough Council (BBC) on the south western tip of the Lake District in Cumbria lodged a brief with the Landscape Institute for a competition to improve the public realm of a desperately poor sink estate. The estate consists of 600 tenement flats. A two-bedder can be bought for £10k; 480 of these flats are empty; most of the blocks were in receivership. Yet the buildings are all protected in a Conservation Area.

They are within easy walking distance of the town centre and next to BAE Systems’ main dock works, the largest employer in the area.

Chris Jones, BBC’s head of housing, wondered what to do. The blocks are privately owned limiting his ability to change them, but BBC owned, the public realm and the streets. He thought, ‘Could the transformation of the public realm make the difference?’.

The competition was his quest to find an answer. The brief was no less than an invitation to see if landscape could unlock broken places.

Farrer Huxley Associates won the competition. We did it on the single premise that our scheme would seek to ensure that the unoccupied flats were filled.

We worked to identify a ‘tipping point’ that would make it a desirable place where people would want to live.

The budget of £1m was limiting – we could not have everything. We could not even change half of the spaces on the estate. We plotted the routes that

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people take when they first come to the place. We limited our work to the smallest strategic area whilst retaining quality. The windy and harsh coastal environment limited planting all across the town. We identified that the tenements provided a sheltered micro climate. We worked with residents to rekindle social cohesion.

We explored a garden club as a vehicle for residents to engage with place and each other. The scheme was to be 2 – The tenements are handsome buildings, belying their social difficulties.

3, 4 – The dispiriting environment that exists at present.

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Images ©: – Farrer Huxley Associates

of the consideration for or investment in landscape that are necessary in order to make robust and desirable places. The current system puts an unbearable pressure on the public sector to deliver numbers of houses.

The NPPF with its ‘presumption to build’ in the absence of adopted local plans has led to convenience for and spurious viability claims by house builders, resulting in reluctant acceptance of poor development, purely to meet the numbers targets.

This delivers bad development that will negatively affect lives. A doughnutshaped growth pattern is emerging in many of our towns, with allocated housing sites being placed on the edge of town, eating up valuable greenfield sites, demanding more car use and adding pressure to services that are already over-stretched, as they have to reach ever greater distances. This has a devastating effect on the health of the town centre and the high street.

It is because of reactive planning at the mercy of house builders and local authorities without the resources for coherent strategic planning that we find ourselves in this position.

Nationally, more than 90% of allocated sites do not have a landscape architect.

Placemaking is a concept that too often remains in university lecture halls and not in professional practice.

The Fabian Society’s document Pride of Place found that 68% of people felt that community spirit in Britain had declined in their lifetime and that this was a loss they did not want. The study also found that people defined ‘place’ in a much more ‘relational’ way than expected. While their surrounding environment was important, the polling found that people were more likely to identify with the people in their area rather than the physical place itself.

Jane Jacobs knew this when she talked about organising complexity – the role of the designer is to create conditions that give a place life. This means making places where a wide range of people can rub shoulders and create community. The trend towards increased loneliness in Britain, and the lack of good health, alongside the global issues of urbanisation and its /...

5, 6, 8 – Landscape interventions will create a sense of community.

7 – Farrer Huxley’s masterplan includes paths in the central area to encourage interaction.

Images ©: – Farrer Huxley Associates

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green, as soft and inviting as possible.

We believe that the power of plants will entice people to get involved and care for their environment.

Our masterplan became a sequence of spaces that maximize the impact of a visitor’s first impression. It is much greener and more flexible than what was there before, allowing the spaces to adapt to meet changing needs. Areas that could be for growing vegetables one year could be lawns or a play space the next, as demand dictated.

The competition was unique as the shortlisted teams all had an active participation session with the estate residents who were central to selection.

The confidence shown by residents in our approach formed the basis of positive and proactive iterative design development. This led to huge support for our work and a unanimous planning decision.

Our challenge is now being realised.

We go on site in July 2015. This has been delayed but it is a delay we are happy to accept as the tenements have been bought out of receiver-ship and we are now coordinating works with the refurbishment of the flats. The magic of landscape to realise change is already evident.

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Case Study Dover Court Estate, Islington, London N1 The London Borough of Islington (LBI) is rightly striving to meet its housing needs through a rigorous interrogation of its existing estate, such that the profit from housing can benefit and improve the whole neighbourhood. The central point is that this is a landscape-led approach where the new housing pays for better and additional affordable accommodation and, crucially, delivers a comprehensive landscape improvement that provides communal amenities, play, and an inviting and sociable landscape for all.

We have worked closely with the architect PTEa to ensure the new buildings reinforce the landscape character, remove unsafe areas and provide a legible estate hierarchy with a series of beautiful spaces. The whole scheme is greener, and is working hard to contribute to local biodiversity and climate resilience.

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Central to our work has been consultation with residents, and their recognition of, and support for, a better landscape for the whole community, both new and existing. This landscape recognition has seen the budget for the external works increase both as a percentage of the project budget and from £1.6m to £2.7m. The landscape here is the central plank of good place making.

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Images ©: – Farrer Huxley Associates

9 – The scheme makes the place greener and increases biodiversity.

10, 11 – ‘An inviting and sociable landscape for all’.

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12 – Both the new and the existing community will benefit.

13 – Plan showing the landscape-led approach.

impact on climate change, means that we must become much smarter. If we invest in building places that enable community and are resilient now, we will yield many societal, economic and environmental benefits in the future.

We need cities that value the people who make them. If we want to change what our places look like, we have to change the decision-making processes that have given us the results we have now.

There needs to be a greater willingness to engage in the democratic process. Amanda Burden, when acting as director of planning in New York, understood that this meant that at the core of what makes a place work is not its buildings, but the spaces between them. The Building for Life 12 document, written by CABE, shows this too – community spaces are what people crave. Places where you don’t feel alone, where you feel safe, can express yourself and feel as though you belong. We must begin framing our political decisions through a placemaking lens and when we do this, we will find that many of our problems begin to be unlocked.

Images ©: – Farrer Huxley Associates

We need cities that value the people who make them.

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Over the 30 years of my career working in the public and private sector, I have found that quality in the context of housing is complex and revolves around public realm. The difference between a place where people want to live and one where they do not, is found in the strength of the landscape that ties the built form together. Whether in the smallest of landscape improvements or wholesale area- regeneration projects, the overwhelming feedback is that it is the reconnection of people with nature /...

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Update

Allocated housing in green field sites

Allocated housing in green field sites

suburbs

suburbs

suburbs

town centre

town centre

town centre

14 – Diagram showing how building on the periphery can hollow out a town centre.

15 – The improvements to Dover Court Estate will have an impact not only on residents, but also on all users of the area.

outward growth has a ‘hollowing out’ effect on town centres

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building blocks of social, happy and healthy lives. It is these that provide the motivation for all in the practice to do what we do.

I hope that as we look at our own personal and professional lives, we will all remember that making cities and towns is something that happens over many years and with many hands.

Kelvin Campbell’s theory of ‘Massive Small’ is one that should inspire us to remember that change is possible when we choose to take part.

The reconnection of people with nature and the power of well designed safe places make the biggest differences to people’s lives.

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Images ©: – Farrer Huxley Associates

and the enabling power of well designed safe places that make the biggest and most transformational differences to people’s lives. The two case studies in this article are typical examples of how my practice tries, in a small way, to turn these ideas into action. On these and many other schemes, the feedback from those who live there is often simple, ‘I can hear bird song’, ‘I can smell the blossom’ or ‘I am happy to sit and wait for my friend’. They all represent the re-establishment of fundamental

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Sporting life

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Feature

As a nation, we need and want to get fitter.

But what impact can the landscape have on these desires, and what impact does our interest in fitness and sport have on the landscape?

BY GEORGE BULL

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Feature

2 – Surf Snowdonia sits comfortably within the beautiful landscape.

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the heart of the Conwy Valley, you will soon be able to go surfing. For eight months of the year, you’ll be able to count on a perfect twometre wave of pristine mountain water that will peel for 200m creating a barrel that you can surf inside, just like in the photos. Only you won’t be on the beach in Hawaii, you’ll be on the edge of the Snowdonia National Park, in Wales. Assuming Surf Snowdonia succeeds, it will be one of the most dramatic examples yet of how sometimes it’s sport that can rescue a landscape.

The story of how the world’s first artificial surfing lagoon ended up in the sleepy Welsh village of Dolgarrog starts a thousand miles away in San Sebastian, Spain. Ever since the Beach Boys were big news someone, somewhere has been trying to make an artificial wave you could surf. At their secret test facility in the Basque Country, a bunch of engineers with a passion for surfing who call themselves Wavegarden, finally did it.

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Landscape architect Planit-IE had been following their progress for some time before it was invited to consider how the former Dolgarrog aluminium works might be redeveloped as a leisure project.

Its client – crane-hire mogul Martin Ainscough – was also aware of Wavegarden, so when the economics for a conventional lodge resort failed to stack up, they collectively realised there was an opportunity to explore a radical alternative.

Roughly the size of six football pitches and fed entirely by rainwater collected from Snowdonia’s mountain reservoirs – which first powers the nearby RWE hydroelectric station at Dolgarrog before entering the lagoon – Surf Snowdonia is the first of its kind in the world. Managing Partner at Planit-IE Peter Swift says that, now the project is nearly complete, it’s clear that the concept is the only thing that would have worked for the site.

Image ©: 1, 2 – Virtual Planit courtesy of Surf Snowdonia

ON THE SITE OF a defunct aluminium works, in

‘The economics of the Conwy Valley have always been difficult. But the landscape is another matter: Snowdonia National Park has always had international standing. The reason the Welsh Assembly Government gave funding to Surf Snowdonia was because it could see the gravity it could give the area. Manchester and Liverpool are only an hour away, but the pent-up demand for something like this is pan-European. This will be an international destination.’

Swift says that almost as soon as the £12 million project received planning permission, the client – Conwy Adventure Leisure – received letters of interest from the International Surfing Federation in Santa Barbara and the International Olympic Committee, both of which would be at the forefront of any future discussions were surfing to ever become an Olympic sport. This is all good for brand Surf Snowdonia, but this isn’t just a place for the pros.

Swift points out that, on the one hand, adrenaline sports that were previously very niche have developed mass appeal, and on the other, people have been falling back in love with being outside. Part of the rationale behind the project, he explains, is that it takes amateurs so long to become proficient at surfing because there just isn’t the access to reliable, surfable swell. The 300m by 120m man-made lake at Dolgarrog will cater to all levels. And with vantage points and café facilities part of the site design, you don’t even have to surf to enjoy it. Conwy Adventure Leisure expects visitors to be ‘conservatively in excess of 75,000 per year’.

With Snowdonia National Park on the doorstep, this promises to do more than simply regenerate the village of Dolgarrog. Rather like the Eden Project in Cornwall, it will offer people a gateway into the landscape beyond. This can be both good and bad. Dan Barnett, access and recreation manager for Exmoor National Park Authority, says that people are diversifying the way they use national parks, with mountain biking, kayaking and horse-riding all on the increase.

Image ©: 3 – By Planit-IE courtesy of Surf Snowdonia

3 – Perspective masterplan of Surf Snowdonia

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Feature

There are also now more organised events, from trail races to triathlons. Of course part of this is people getting pleasure from where they are, but Barnett says ‘some people don’t just want to do an activity, they want to set goals around it’. Lots of these activities also have kit associated with them, and people like kit. Access to lighter, more affordable equipment has made it easier for novices to get out there and give things a try.

A reputation for adventure can be good for the image of the park, he says, but at Exmoor their real contribution to the economic agenda remains small. Cycling still only accounts for around 6 per cent of the use of the park, horse-riding around five per cent and kayaking less than one per cent.

What’s more, their impact on the landscape and a park’s funds can be disproportionate. Horse-riders might be comparatively few but because those doing it are now often not as skilled or confident, they have higher expectations of the condition the route should be. ‘We’re having to invest quite heavily to meet those expectations,’ Barnett says.

But if so-called adventure sports account for less than 20 per cent, what’s everyone else doing?

Walking. Of course walking or going out for a run – whether in a national park or your local park –

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is not generally recognised as a sport. When Sport England released data in January bemoaning that the number of people regularly participating in sport for 2013–14 was down by 125,000, walking wasn’t on the list.

In the current vogue, walking, running or cycling tend to be sidelined as ‘fitness’ or as part of an ‘active lifestyle’. But as Ken Worpole, author and emeritus professor at London Metropolitan University’s Cities Institute, says, this is a misnomer.

‘If you use the word “sport”, you’re actually cutting off most people’s activity, which is recreational,’ he says. ‘The last 20–30 years of traffic surveys didn’t include cycling and walking, but traffic managers have had to acknowledge that it is a legitimate means of transport. Politicians now understand that fitness needs to be part of everyday life, rather than segregated into sport.’

Walking and cycling are now also big business.

‘Ten years ago there was probably one bike shop in Hackney. Now there are 12,’ says Worpole, whose house overlooks Clissold Park in north London.

Like many urban parks, Clissold was once maligned by park managers as too socially complicated to bother with; it was easier to focus on country parks.

But with the help of lottery money, it is now thriving with a huge mix of demographics using the park for informal exercise. ‘When I did Parklife with Demos in 1996, one clear indicator of what made a park work was having a wide social mix around it – and parks like Clissold have been reinvented to offer the diverse activities that a diverse demographic want,’ Worpole says.

4 – St Dominic’s Primary School in Camden is one of the schools where LUC has become involved.

Playgrounds have traditionally been risk averse. Building on the success of Tumbling Bay at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, LUC has designed the playground to challenge children to work together to solve problems.

5 – Play doesn’t have to be boisterous. A quiet corner at St Dominic’s.

Image ©: 4, 5 – LUC

For the big national parks, such as Dartmoor and the Lake District, this can translate into even more visitors and both park authorities are reported to be considering permit systems for races. They don’t actually have the power to say ‘no’ though, explains Barnett, so the focus is on encouraging consultation and trying to spread out the race dates. ‘You tend to manage the issues rather than control the numbers, because it’s actually very difficult to know who and how many people use the park each year,’ he says.

Swimming and the City Despite recent Sport England figures reporting a marked drop in participation in swimming, a different story seems to be playing out if you look at take-up of open-water swimming. Jonathan Cowie, editor of open-water swimming magazine H2Open, says that ‘in January this year you could have attended a cold-water swimming championships every weekend if you wanted to.

That certainly wasn’t the case a few years ago.’

One project hoping to capture this zeitgeist is the Thames Baths. Set up by architect Studio Octopi and with planting design from Jonathan Cook Landscape Architects, the project is about to launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund design development and a planning application for the end of 2015.

The 25m by 10m pool at Victoria Embankment will be run as a social enterprise, able to accommodate 300–500 people per day and will cost the same as using your local pool. Reeds and rushes that were originally just going to extend the landscape along the riverbank will now be part of a closed-loop natural filtration system.

‘When there isn’t an overflow in the Thames it is safe enough to swim in. We want to change people’s perceptions about the river,’ says Studio Octopi director Chris Romer-Lee. ‘The idea is to use the Kickstarter campaign to build a community behind the project, so we don’t look like we’re dropping something onto the city.’ www.thamesbaths.com

6 – Studio Octopi’s vision for swimming in the Thames.

7 – The reeds and rushes that surround the Thames Bath will be a vital part of the filtration system.

Image ©: 6, 7 – Studio Octopi & Picture Plane

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Landscape Spring 2015 23

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speak the same language,’ she says. ‘The hallowed dream of course is for this data to satisfy the clinicians, who can then roll it out and persuade other local authorities that there is a benefit in paying out for this from their public health or even healthcare budgets.’

Parks are also free, and local authorities are increasingly looking at ways to use them to get people into active habits that don’t require an expensive gym pass. Earlier this year, Enfield Council was offering residents the chance to ‘get a park body’ with free hour-long exercise sessions as part of the Our Parks scheme. While in Camden, where one in three ten year-olds qualifies as obese, a new programme is aiming to get children active early.

A collaboration between the borough’s clinicalconditioning and public health teams, Camden Active Health Programme, is working with local primary and secondary schools to see how new playground facilities, designed by landscape architect LUC, will influence the children’s lifestyles. A team from UCL’s sport science department has a grant to spend a year monitoring their health and is due to publish its findings this summer.

Jennette Emery-Wallis, director at LUC, says that the feedback from teachers and children so far has been very positive, but it’ll be exciting to be able to provide data. ‘As landscape architects we don’t

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24 Landscape Spring 2015

Just sometimes, though, the answer comes from the community itself. The complex interplay between landscape and sport – in its broadest sense – is perhaps best exemplified by one of the most success ful community movements of the past decade: Parkrun. Founded by Paul Sinton-Hewitt in 2004 as a means to get back into running, the concept is simple: register online and then turn up to a Parkrun park every Saturday at 9am and run 5km. More than a million people now regularly participate in more than 500 parks across the world.

One of those venues is Waterworks Park in Belfast.

‘Waterworks was a no-go area when we started Parkrun there,’ says Sinton-Hewitt. While The Troubles in Northern Ireland had meant that this wasn’t unusual, he says Waterworks had 18-foot high fences with Catholics living on one side and Protestants on the other. ‘We started in this park on the 6 November 2010 and we have run there every week since barring a couple of cancellations.

That’s some 225 events.’

Sinton-Hewitt says Parkrun is also helping to take back the parks in his native South Africa, where conflict and crime means people are often reluctant to use them for recreation. ‘More than half the participants in many of the South African parkruns are walking the event with their close family, which I believe proves the point that parkrun is enabling the decolonisation of these spaces.’

•

Image ©: 4, 5 – LUC

8

8 – LUC has designed the playground at Haverstock Secondary School to encourage activity.

9 – Planting surrounds the outdoor gym at Haverstock Secondary School to make it more intimate, a request that followed LUC’s consultation.

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Image Š: 1 – Arup Associates

Lush, listed and loved The listing of Gateway House in Basingstoke provides a great opportunity to revisit the thinking behind one of the earliest uses of green roofs.

BY RUTH SLAVID

Landscape Summer 2015 27

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2 – The building as it looks today.

3 – As built: a green building in a green landscape.

English Heritage gave the following reasons for the decision to list the building Grade II:

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• Architectural interest: it is an unusual and distinct example of 1970s commercial office architecture

by Arup Associates’ Group 2, showing innovative and good quality design and use of materials in both its exterior and interior;

IN JANUARY English Heritage (now Historic

England) listed 14 post-war office buildings, a move that elicited the jokey media response that is all too common where mid 20th century architecture is involved. In fact they were an impressive crop of well-preserved buildings, designed for ways of working that have since changed but which still manage to find valuable uses.

Image ©: 2 – English Heritage 3 – Arup Associates

Among these buildings was Gateway House in Basingstoke, now known as Mountbatten House.

And this building in fact had two separate listings, one for the building and the other for the roof gardens and perimeter landscape. It is this latter element that is truly extraordinary.

We tend to think of green roofs as a contemporary trope, but in fact their history is long, going back as far as the turf roofs of Viking homes. Indeed, the moniker ‘the hanging gardens of Basingstoke’ given to Gateway House is an indication of just how old the idea is. Nevertheless, in 1974 to 76, when Gateway House was built, there was no industry to support the use of green roofs – no tried and tested root barriers, no sedum mats and no real knowledge of which plants would thrive and which would not.

It is a testament to the care and thought that went into its design that the building not only attracted praise when completed but was seen as in sufficiently good and unaltered condition to justify listing 40 years later.

• Historical interest: aside from its immediate association with the nationally important architects firm Arup Associates the building has an important historic association with the nationally renowned garden designer James Russell (the roof gardens being one of his key works). Additionally, the building’s association with Wiggins Teape, an important and wellknown British paper manufacturer, adds further to its special interest; • Intactness: its exterior has survived remarkably intact, with no later alterations, and despite some internal re-ordering, its plan form and interior, through the survival of key fixtures and fittings, retains a good degree of authenticity; • Group value: it forms an integral part of its particularly important associated landscaping.

Much of the success is down to the landscape architect on the project, Charles Funke, who worked closely with Arup Associates on the project. Funke, who has had his own eponymous practice for 30 years, mediated between James Russell’s planting list and the architect. He had the ideal background for this job. A landscape architect, he had worked for years for planting company Craigwell House Nurseries and Flower House International, and his projects had included planting for temporary exhibitions and also work at the Royal Tournament. In both cases it was important to save weight and so he was used to working with soilless planting – a skill he had first developed during World War Two when he was charged with growing salads to feed the Eighth Army in the desert. /...

Landscape Summer 2015 29

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Arup Associates had designed the building on a slope facing towards the south and the idea was to make the most of the views and to allow office workers both to see the outside world and to step out into it. An article in the Arup Journal in 1979 says, ‘Efforts have been made to make pleasant outdoor areas available to all those who work in the building, on the basis both that it is sometimes desirable actually to go outside from your office, and that the knowledge that it is possible to do so banishes any feeling of being “cooped up”. So the terraces and courtyards have been extensively landscaped in such a way as to offer considerable variety of outlook from different offices on all levels. Trees, bushes, grass, paving, seats, rocks, pebbles and water have all been used. Areas of the site not occupied by the building have also been densely landscaped with semi-mature trees.’

4 – Workers had views of greenery from all parts of the building.

5 – The fact that the building is in such good condition assisted with the listing process.

6 – It is easy to see where the name ‘The Hanging Gardens of Basingstoke’ came from.

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30 Landscape Summer 2015

Image ©: 4 – Arup Associates 5 – English Heritage 6 – Arup Associates

So what exactly was Charles Funke’s involvement in this? ‘James Russell had put a collage of plants together,’ he explained. ‘I said, some are fit for purpose and some are not. I had an understanding of the micro-climate that you get on such buildings.

The orientation of the terraces at between south and southwest was near ideal. There was a lot of protection from the north and the east.’ He was confident that there would be adequate water and that the soil would not freeze – the air circulating in the voids of the building would ensure that, he thought, although he admits ‘there was an element of guesswork’.

Funke knew from his experience at the Royal Tournament that the important thing was to have a lightweight soil that could hold organic material and not dry out. He based his soil on one that he had created for the Royal Tournament, incorporating Lytag, a burnt clay lightweight aggregate. For a root barrier he used an early fibreglass insulation product called CosyWrap which, he said, ‘I knew would work from previous experience’.

He asked for a 14-day flood test and, apart from some small areas around the lift shaft, did not find any leaks. The ‘flat’ roofs were all laid to falls and there was no ponding of water. And this level of attention to detail extended to the plants as well.

‘We took great care with the plant material,’ Funke said. ‘If I wasn’t satisfied with the structure of a plant I wouldn’t buy it.’ /...

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9

Image ©: 7, 8, 9, 10 – Arup Associates

7 – Section showing the position of the planting above the pyramidal roofs.

8 – Flood test during construction.

Note the lack of safety equipment.

9 – The roof under construction.

10 – Aerial view showing how the roof fitted into the surrounding landscape.

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Landscape Spring 2015 31

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‘If we had the knowledge we had today, we would have had a different regime’

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There have been other changes, in particular the introduction of more flowering plants. Over the years, members of Funke’s team have visited regularly.

The building is less generally accessible than it was, since Wiggins Teape left it and it is now occupied by a company involved in the defence business, with concomitant security concerns. But there have been visits, not least by English Heritage for the listing, and just a few years ago Funke flew over it in his plane and was impressed by what he saw.

32 Landscape Summer 2015

Would he do anything differently? Yes, but not because he regrets anything. ‘If we had the knowledge we had today, we would have had a different regime,’ he says. Plants survive out of doors today which were previously not seen as hardy, largely due to the way that they are reared in nurseries. Because of this and the form of its building, Gateway/Mountbatten House is definitely of its time – but that is what makes it worthy of listing. And, as a working environment with its generous access to well-considered outside space, it is far more civilised than many offices designed today.

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11 – Today the building has mature trees and more colourful planting than was originally envisaged.

Image ©: 11 – Arup Associates

The immediate result was a wealth of healthy looking plants – and this health has been maintained.

Some trees have been taken out and replaced as they reached maturity. Funke was insistent however that the roots must be left in situ as pulling them up would have destroyed the integrity of the root barrier.

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Landscape Summer 2015 33

Landscape will be the catalyst for the revitalisation of the admired but ruined St Peter’s Seminary on the outskirts of Glasgow. ERZ has come up with a masterplan for the landscape that is unusually fluid and focuses on engagement and interaction rather than a range of fixed features.

BY CARINE BRANNAN

Revelling 34 Landscape Summer 2015

in ruins Landscape Summer 2015 35

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is Glasgow’s only architect of note. References to his work abound throughout the city from his internationally recognised Glasgow School of Art to reconstructed houses and tearooms – even to his stylised typography on posters and shop fronts.

But this may all be about to change. Move over Mack – there’s a new kid in town!

The ruined St Peter’s Seminary, at Kilmahew Glen on the outskirts of Glasgow, is all that remains today of a radical 1960s modernist building.

This highly contested site has been the subject of much debate regarding its possible fate since it was abandoned to the forces of nature over 30 years ago. Now Scottish-based environmental art agency NVA’s campaign to resuscitate Kilmahew/St Peter’s has had a significant boost, receiving a first-round pass from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

What is most fascinating about the regeneration process is the decision to use the surrounding landscape as the conceptual starting point of the project with an emphasis on the landscape as a tool to re-animate the site. Most notably, this project’s boldest innovation is the consideration of the building as a sculptural element within the landscape.

Project History The Kilmahew/St Peter’s site is 20 miles northwest of Glasgow, close to Cardross village in Argyll and Bute and overlooking the Clyde Valley. The 40ha south-facing site is predominantly wooded and lies within the Green Belt. The landscape has seen successive reshaping over centuries and contains sections of native woodlands and distinctive river gorges. There is evidence of built and natural forms throughout the site but these have been variously subsumed by unmanaged vegetation and decay.

From the thirteenth century the land belonged to the Lairds of Napier with the last Laird forced to sell off land. By 1820 the remains of the estate were bought by the Burns family, who were industrialists and shipping merchants. They undertook extensive improvements to the estate, transforming the surrounding farmland into parkland. Kilmahew was redesigned into a Victorian ‘romantic’ ornamental estate with Kilmahew House as the centrepiece, a baronial Victorian mansion built from sandstone that had been quarried locally.

2 – The overgrown landscape has a sense of mystery and concealed elements that ERZ intends to preserve 3 – Evocative but sad – the derelict building in its woodland setting 4 – The landscape contains many elements that predate the seminary.

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36 Landscape Summer 2015

Image ©: 1 – Cristina Armstrong courtesy of NVA 2 – James Johnson courtesy of NVA

VISITORS TO might easily be fooled into thinking GLASGOW that Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Their radical and daring complex of buildings was designed to wrap around the existing mansion house. Their design won the prestigious RIBA Architecture award in 1967.

But by 1984 the seminary had been abandoned, with severe weather damage continuing to take its toll on the building. Lack of land management led to further deterioration of the surrounding estate and parkland. The seminary buildings were attracting international recognition, receiving Category ‘A’ listing from Historic Scotland in recognition of their architectural importance, and in 2005 the World Monument Fund listed St Peter’s as one of the world’s most endangered buildings.

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Image ©: 3 – ERZ 4 –Neil Davidson courtesy of NVA

Some original Victorian planting still exists, such as invasive Rhododendron ponticum, whilst much has long since disappeared. In 1866, John Fleming, a renowned gardener who had previously worked at Cliveden House on the Thames, designed a walled garden including heated glasshouses dedicated to growing vegetables and a wide range of fruits.

The partially collapsed frames of these glasshouses remain. During the late nineteenth century, a number of exotic tree species were introduced from around the world, particularly from Japan. In 1919 the estate was sold again, with the new owners undertaking further modernisation. Recently local volunteers have brought the walled gardens back into agricultural production.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Glasgow bought the estate in 1948, using Kilmahew House as a theological college, and in 1958 the Archbishop commissioned St Peter’s Seminary. Developed by the Scottish architectural firm Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, its architects Isi Metzstein and Andy McMillan produced innovative designs for a modernist concrete construction. It was hailed as one of the finest modern buildings of the day, and Metzstein and McMillan cited Le Corbusier’s La Tourette monastery as being amongst their influences.

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With funding from Historic Scotland, Avanti Architects was commissioned to complete a conservation assessment and cost report for the buildings and ERZ Landscape Architects tasked with undertaking a landscape overview study.

These reports helped inform dialogue regarding future ambitions and the development of a creative response to the site. ERZ’s study, carried out in parallel to ecological and preliminary woodland assessments, led to a fuller understanding of the site and the qualities of the complex landscape.

Meanwhile, NVA, working with Urban Splash and funded by the Scottish Arts Council, created a series of art commissions for the site. Further attempts to develop the site commercially, including a proposal by Urban Splash, failed to provide sufficient financial returns, leaving NVA in sole discussion with the diocese.

Landscape Summer 2015 37

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The masterplan ERZ led the masterplan development, describing it as a ‘model for a new creative and productive landscape’ and in 2012 the proposal won the Neighbourhood Planning Category in the Landscape Institute Awards.

‘The project, instead of focusing exclusively on the building, considers this remarkable building and its landscape setting together, creating a public landscape that becomes a locus for an ongoing creative process,’ said the judges. ‘In this way the landscape leads the regeneration. The aim is to shift people’s relationship to the landscape from one of being a passive observer or detached consumer to having an active physical or intellectual engagement.’

The masterplan evolved from the earlier Kilmahew/ St Peter’s Commission Plan (May 2010), which sets out the rationale for revitalising the site. Including a review of the site’s historical context, the condition of the built heritage and natural landscape plus presenting examples of precedent projects, this document acted as a statement of intent for NVA’s future ambitions. The masterplan also responds to and is informed by the earlier landscape overview study and art commissions for the site. It aims to introduce incremental placemaking, allowing Kilmahew to become an ‘other’ space where people can enjoy experiences that they do not have in their day-to-day lives. The presumption is that by redefining the idea of ‘territory’ you can enhance personal experiences beyond the landscape itself.

Rolf Roscher, director of ERZ, describes the approach as shifting people’s relationship with the landscape from one of being a passive observer or detached consumer, to having a more active physical, sensory and intellectual engagement helping to build a strong sense of ‘place’.

The masterplan focuses on two main landscape interventions that are creative responses to the earlier pieces of research designed to provoke personal experience of the site. Firstly, Kilmahew’s landscape should retain a sense of surprise and discovery through a deliberate management of a sequence of ‘reveals’ and ‘thresholds’. ERZ’s landscape overview study describes the power of the site as resulting from its enclosed nature and the sudden unexpected revealing of long and panoramic views. Secondly, the site should maintain the qualities of the ‘interim state’ of

38 Landscape Summer 2015

certain locations, such as the on-going colonisation by birch trees within the estate. Planned regeneration of the Kilmahew site should be introduced gradually and sequentially to allow a holistic, rather than managed, transformation to take place.

Two distinct public and academic engagements which provide creative and innovative inputs have also helped inform the masterplan development.

Firstly, NVA, in partnership with Creative Scotland and the British Council Scotland, presented a programme of events responding to the themes of restoration and reuse of St Peter’s at La Biennale di Venezia’s 2010 International Architecture Exhibition.

A book, To Have and To Hold: Future of a Contested Landscape by Gerrie van Noord sets out the arguments and ambitions for the Kilmahew/St Peter’s site resulting from the Biennale conversations. Its collection of essays focuses on preserving the building and imagining the landscape as a place of permanent ‘flux’.

Secondly, NVA partnered with Glasgow, Strathclyde and Edinburgh Universities to develop an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project.

Called ‘The Invisible College’, this involved hosting a wide range of events, exhibitions and interventions in response to the buildings and historic grounds.

Research focused on the ‘site as subject matter’, with a vision to re-imagine and transform the landscape, combining community activities, university-led research and contemporary arts practice.

The masterplan represents a long-term vision, ‘anticipating the continuing generative, artistic and research activities, whilst retaining flexibility for change’. The initial phase will make the site safe and accessible with immediate intervention to remove invasive species and create environments for new planting and management, thus enabling remnants of earlier landscaping to be retained.

Further phases focus on several key aspects of the landscape. The woodlands are in poor condition, lacking structure, and ERZ has identified sections that demand different interventions responding to the landscape’s origin, condition and qualities.

Three key developments include restoration of the walled garden, development of an upper meadow to provide a flexible growing space and a lower meadow that is earmarked for camping. The walled garden will provide space for cultivation /...

5 – The masterplan includes the walled garden, which volunteers have already brought back into agricultural production.

6 – The landscape will be the catalyst for regeneration of the building.

Images ©: 5, 6 – ERZ

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Landscape Summer 2015 39

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Avanti Architects, ERZ Landscape Architects and NORD Architecture. Angus Farquhar, Creative Director of NVA, describes the masterplan as a ‘20 year aspiration – a manifesto for landscape intervention’. With a planned opening date scheduled for 2017, the new designs will provide an arts venue, a permanent exhibition, a ‘field station’ that will include informal teaching spaces, more than four kilometres of accessible woodland paths and a productive garden.

7 – The complex layering of the site’s built and natural heritage will be emphasised by the masterplan.

8 – ERZ’s approach recognises what a magical place this is.

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A series of meandering pathways will navigate the site, creating alternative ways to explore and expose the landscape. This new layout will reveal the complex layering of the site’s built and natural history. The existing slope that is the setting for seminary buildings will be re-profiled to establish a clean, sculpted landform, incorporating a number of stepped terraces, whilst a contemporary reinterpretation of the remains of the Japanese mountain garden will be created, revealing features from the earlier Victorian parkland.

The future Glasgow, desperate to shake off its industrial past, sought new opportunities to represent itself.

Architectural heritage, a rich source of the city’s pride, offered a fitting opportunity to present post-industrial Glasgow as a dynamic and creative city. Step forward C.R. Mackintosh, who although moderately popular during his early career in Glasgow left the city, disillusioned, when interest in his pioneering style waned. Glasgow also turned its back on Kilmahew/St Peter’s with the building only occupied for 14 years before being left to its present demise. Is the circle now complete?

In late 2013, NVA was awarded a first-round pass from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This released £565,000 of development funding, leading to a second-stage submission for £3 million in 2015.

Planning & Listed Building Consents for the designs have been approved and in a gesture of goodwill the archdiocese has conditionally agreed to donate the site for the public good. NVA announced the design team to take forward the plans, including

40 Landscape Spring 2015

What makes this contested site of Kilmahew/ St Peter’s so powerful is the juxtaposition of Brutalist architecture with the remnants of a Victorian bucolic landscape. The building, beloved by architects, provokes strong emotions in some critics who would rather it was razed to the ground.

There’sa certain irony that in order to reinvent this architectural icon, the surrounding landscape has now become the catalyst for its regeneration.

The real test of the Kilmahew/St Peter’s project will be to present a new form of landscape; one that can support and nurture fresh responses and which attracts support from not just local communities in and around Glasgow but beyond.

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Further reading: Various documents, reports and videos, including those mentioned in the article, can be found on the NVA website nva.org.uk Carine Brannan jointly runs the Landscape Interface Studio in the School of Architecture and Landscape at Kingston University.

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Image ©: 7, 8 – Al Smith courtesy of NVA

and will be the main focus for visitors to the site.

The redesign retains some existing elements such as apple trees, remnants of a yew hedge and a giant redwood Sequoiadendron giganteum with the addition of a hedge to define the northern boundary.

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Landscape Summer 2015 41

Technical

By Tim O’Hare

Fundamentals of tree pit soils Too often recently planted trees fail to thrive because errors have been made in the design and construction of the tree pits and particularly in the decisions that have been made about soils. There are some basic principles to follow, and actions that can be taken to give trees the best chance of a healthy future.

T

Anaerobism Anaerobism is the term attributed to a ‘low oxygen’ environment. In soils this is an immediate and major problem that can cause plant failure. Without oxygen, plant roots simply cannot take up water (or plant nutrients within the water), which induces a ‘drought condition’, even though there may be ample water in the soil.

There are three main causes of anaerobic soil conditions:

42 Landscape Summer 2015

1 – Healthy trees in a nursery 2 – What a waste – trees that have died shortly after planting

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• Topsoil placed too deep • Lack of drainage • Soil compaction

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Excessive topsoil depths The depth to which topsoil should be placed is probably the most misunderstood element of soil management in the landscape industry.

There is still a perception by many that ‘the more topsoil the better’, when in reality this can have catastrophic results.

In a natural soil environment, for example a woodland, an agricultural field, a park or a back garden, topsoil depths rarely extend below 300mm and in many instances they can be as little as 150mm. So why is topsoil routinely

Images ©: – Tim O’Hare

h e importance of trees within the landscape has been rapidly climbing up the agenda in the last few years. The efforts of the Tree Design Action Group (TDAG), the latest revision to BS 5837:2012, and the increasing number of companies promoting ever more complex tree planting systems, would appear to support this.

So why do so many trees that leave the nursery in a healthy state still end up failing after planting?

Poor soil conditions within the tree pit will inhibit basic root function.

This in turn leads to a lack of water uptake and a rapid decline of the tree.

The most common factor responsible for this is the development of anaerobic conditions within the pit.

Far lesser problems, certainly during the tree’s establishment period, are low fertility, lack of water, the wrong pH or ground contamination. If anaerobism can be avoided, the tree has a fighting chance of survival.

3 – An anaerobic tree pit, which does not bode well for the future 4 – Soil profile

Tree rootball

Aerobic topsoil

Anaerobic topsoil

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placed to a depth of 1 metre in new tree pits? And why do so many tree pit details specify this?

Beneath the topsoil is a variable depth of subsoil. The main difference between the composition of topsoil and subsoil is the higher organic matter content of topsoil. This is accompanied by a far greater population of soil microbes (eg. fungi, bacteria, protozoa), which among other things, are responsible for the breakdown of organic matter and the synthesis of nutrients for plant uptake. Like tree roots, these microbes require a supply of oxygen to breath (collectively known as the Biochemical Oxygen Demand or ‘BOD’). Since the oxygen is sourced from the atmosphere above ground, its greatest availability is in the upper soil layers (i.e. the topsoil). When topsoil is placed too deeply, in a place where the

supply of oxygen is less, the BOD of the soil microbes becomes greater than the incoming supply. As a consequence, the soil runs out of oxygen and becomes anaerobic.

We should not ignore the quality of subsoil. The term ‘subsoil’ is often regarded as meaning a soil that is ‘sub-standard’ to topsoil. This is not the case and subsoil is very much an essential part of any soil profile. It

complements the functions of the overlying topsoil and has a number of key roles: • Absorbs surplus water percolating down from the topsoil layer above.

In doing so, subsoil also provides a valuable ‘environmental service’ in the form of water attenuation during periods of high rainfall; • Acts as a reservoir of water during dry periods; • Provides the main anchorage and support for large shrubs and trees; • Supplements the topsoil with reserves of mineral plant nutrients (eg. potassium, magnesium, calcium).

The reason that subsoil does not become anaerobic at depth is because it does not have a microbe population, and therefore has a low BOD. Any oxygen that permeates down to the subsoil is therefore exclusively available for tree roots.

Lack of drainage Poor soil drainage often leads to anaerobic conditions. This is a major cause of failures in new tree planting. /...

Incorrect tree pit detail – topsoil too deep

1m deep tree pit.

Ameliorate with tree planting compost

Topsoil

Images ©: – Tim O’Hare

Subsoil

1000mm

Topsoil

Site subsoil

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Landscape Summer 2015 43

Technical

Soil compaction A normal, uncompacted soil is made up of 50% soil particles (by volume), which are aggregated into soil ‘peds’ or ‘structures’. The remaining 50% consists of voids known as ‘pore spaces’.

It is this network of pores that stores and transmits air and water through the soil and maintains an ‘aerated environment’. All but the most sandy soils (or urban tree rootzones) need soil structure to function properly.

5 – A tree pit at the Olympic Park.

6 – A flooded tree pit, with mulch floating on the surface of the water.

Soil compaction, for example from mishandling the soil or excessive traffick, results in the destruction of these structures and pores spaces, and the loss of a vital network for aeration and drainage. The outcome is an anaerobic soil with no waterholding capacity.

THE SOLUTIONS It is worth treating the tree pit as the ‘transitional zone’ between the ‘nursery soil’ (in the field or a container/air-pot) and the ‘real world’. It is the rooting environment that needs to minimise transplant stress, and promote healthy root growth to optimise tree establishment. Various degrees of design intervention may be required to achieve this, depending on the nature of the site (greenfield/brownfield), the existing soils, the topography, the hydrology and other environmental factors such as exposure to wind, sun scorch, etc.

Regardless of the level of design input, it is useful to stick to some basic principles for an aerated soil and healthy rooting environment. Keep tree pit design as simple as possible and minimise the amount of disturbance to the soil.

Soil types Any soil that can maintain its ability to drain and aerate after soil spreading

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and tree planting has the potential for re-use. However, in many landscape projects where there are time constraints and inclement weather to factor in, sandy soils provide the greatest flexibility. They remain ‘non-plastic’ at higher moisture contents, and they are less prone to compaction and structural degradation.

Heavier clay-based soils can be used provided they are reasonably dry and in a friable, ‘non-plastic’ state when handled. Silty soils are generally not suitable for backfilling tree pits as they have weak structural strength and suffer from ‘self-compaction’ even when handled carefully.

Soil depths Quite simply, do not put topsoil too deep. A topsoil depth of 300mm is usually ample, and certainly 400mm should be the maximum and only provided the soil type will allow it.

This applies to planting beds as well as to tree pits.

The British Standard for Topsoil (BS3882: 2007) and DEFRA’s Construction Code of Practice for the Sustainable Use of Soils on Construction Sites (2009) both support this approach.

The rootball should sit on subsoil, and with bigger rootballs, the subsoil will also sit around the lower portion of the rootball.

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44 Landscape Summer 2015

Small rootballs For trees with a smaller rootball (up to 300–400mm deep) that are being planted into ‘in-situ’, undisturbed

Images ©: – Tim O’Hare

Incoming water to a tree pit (i.e. rainfall or irrigation water) is oxygenated, and in fact water is one of the main carriers of oxygen through the soil. If the drainage potential of the tree pit soil is sufficient to allow that water to permeate through it without impedance, then the water is of benefit.

The problem arises when the water stops ‘moving’ through the soil. In tree pits, this can be due to a lack of soil structure in the backfill soil (see the section on compaction below), or an impervious layer below the pit that causes the pit to act as a ‘sump’ for surface draining waters. Essentially, the inputs of water exceed the outputs.

The oxygen within water is readily used by the tree roots and the soil microbes.

Without ‘fresh water’, the environment becomes anaerobic (stagnant water).

Images ©: – Tim O’Hare

Tree pit drainage considerations To prevent anaerobism resulting from waterlogging, the principle of any tree pit design is to ensure that inputs of water are equal to or less than the outputs.

Inputs in this instance could be rainfall, surface water run-off, shallow watertable or irrigation. These are influenced by climate, topography, hydrology, hydrogeology and maintenance.

Outputs include tree root extraction and transpiration (only in the growing season), evaporation from the surface, percolation into the surrounding /...

Topsoil

300mm

Shallow tree pit.

Ameliorate with tree planting compost

Break up base of pit Site subsoil

Tree pit detail for large rootballs

Shallow tree pit.

Ameliorate with tree planting compost

Topsoil

Tree pit subsoil (site or imported)

300mm

Larger rootballs For larger trees, there is a need to excavate a deeper pit to accommodate the rootball. This requires excavation into the subsoil. It is not always sensible to backfill with the same subsoil, especially if it is a particularly heavytextured soil (silty or clayey). In preference, it is better to use a highsand-content subsoil or even a quarried sand, to sit the rootball on, and to surround its lower portion. Sands and sandy subsoils will support the weight of the rootball better, and thereby prevent later settlement. A coarser sand with a narrow particle-size distribution will also be able to maintain a reasonable porosity even in this compacted environment below the rootball, thereby ensuring it will have good aeration, drainage and water storage properties. Roots will grow happily into a sand as it is full of oxygen and water.

Tree pit detail for small rootballs in ‘in-situ’ soil

Min 300mm

ground, it is far better to minimise the size and dimensions of the tree pit to limit the destruction of the soil’s structure.

The tree pit should be as shallow as possible, and usually only requires excavation to the depth at which the rootball will sit. If machine dug, it is useful to decompact the soil in the base of the pit where the excavator bucket often causes smearing and compaction.

After placing the rootball, the pit can be backfilled with the excavated topsoil, ensuring that any soil ameliorants (eg. green compost ) have been evenly mixed with the backfill topsoil.

Break up base of pit

Landscape Summer 2015 45

Technical

References BS 5837:2012 Trees in relation to design, demolition and construction – Recommendations, BSi, 2012

7 – The aim is to keep these trees as healthy as they are in the nursery.

BS 3882:2007 Specification for topsoil and requirements for use, BSi, 2007 Construction Code of Practice for the Sustainable Use of Soils on Construction Sites, DEFRA, 2009 Tim O’Hare is principal soil consultant of Tim O’Hare Associates LLP. He has advised on soil specification and tree pit design for numerous projects throughout the UK, including the Olympic Park and the Athletes’ Village. He has also been investigating failed planting schemes for over 20 years.

Tim O’Hare is the driving force behind a conference entitled ‘Soil – meeting the challenges of a changing landscape’ which will be held on 14 October at the Howbery Park Conference Centre, Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

Soil investigation is essential to determine which drainage option is most applicable to each tree pit.

soils and underlying strata. These are influenced by the size and species of tree, climate and most notably, the drainage potential of tree pit soil and the soakage potential of the underlying strata.

Drainage options may include mounding the pit slightly to help shed water away from the upper rootball, incorporating a mini soakaway in the base of the pit, or connecting the pit to a positive drainage outfall.

46 Landscape Summer 2015

Soil investigation, combined with a review of the landscape proposals, is essential to determine which drainage option(s) is most applicable to each tree pit. Very often more than one option can be applied to a landscape scheme to suit the variable size and location of trees.

The decision about whether to artificially improve tree pit drainage and the method to be used must be taken at an early stage in the landscape design process. All too often drainage provision is only considered when the landscape contractor is due to start tree planting. The available options are very limited at this point as drainage infrastructure probably will not be in place.

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Marking the UN’s International Year of Soils, the conference will have the following speakers: Tim O’Hare, principal, Tim O’Hare Associates ob Askew, senior associate, R Tim O’Hare Associates Sue Illman, Illman Young Landscape Design and Past President LI Johanna Gibbons, J&L Gibbons and advisor to English Heritage John Melmoe, commercial director, Willerby Landscapes George Longmuir, managing director, Freeland Horticulture

To learn more, please email info@toha.co.uk or call 01491 822653

Images ©: – Tim O’Hare

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Landscape Summer 2015 47

Soft Landscape Workshop “Strictly Sustainable” discussing all aspects of what sustainability can mean to landscape & plantings. From macro scale to surviving Box Blight.

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Practice

By Ruth Slavid

Public sector, public space: Working for Sunderland

Images ©: – Sunderland City Council

Landscape professionals have a vital role in the public sector. Merrick Denton-Thompson explains its significance in his introduction to this article on the work of the Sunderland Council landscape team.

Gradually, over the last 50 years, a symbiotic relationship has developed between landscape architects in the public sector and the private sector, and this relationship has been of huge benefit to the general public.However, much has changed over the last five years with as many as half of landscape posts in the public sector having been lost, mainly from local government.

The consequences of such a loss will take time to appear and the private sector can only ever partially replace the lost influence the profession has had on the public sector – policies and programmes.

Without landscape policies having a statutory base, the services have been a soft target in this period of publicsector financial turmoil. But nothing is safe in the public sector with the realisation that the balance between wealth generation and the level of public expenditure has been completely unsustainable for many years. Combine this with the continual erosion of the planning system and the changing priorities of local government and it is easy to see how things could get much worse. Many of the influences driving the changes are responses to failing elements in society, such as health and well-being. This is about fire fighting and sticking plaster rather than prevention, which is our focus.

Looking forward, there is a new agenda. We are uniquely positioned to manage the development interface between people and natural systems, at the very moment that everyone is beginning to realise the vulnerability of humanity. Our approach to multifunctional landscapes can do so much more for the health and well-being of the young and the elderly. We can harness the power of natural systems, can cater for renewable energy, sequestrate carbon, control microclimate, build resilience and reconnect people with sustainable food production.

We should be repositioning the landscape profession to ensure that our democratic system receives direct, impartial advice from us. There should be advice from a small number of very senior landscape posts in every authority to identify issues, develop policy and act as an intelligent client in the commissioning of the private sector to do all the work. We ought to go further and suggest that no one department can bring the range of public goods that landscape can provide, and that it should be a corporate function of the chief executive and the cabinet.

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Merrick Denton-Thompson

Landscape Summer 2015 49

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1 – The new Keel Square will provide a gathering space and a better point of arrival.

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f you stand in the office of the landscape department at Sunderland City Council, the view from the window is magnificent.

From the civic centre, set on an eminence and designed in the 1960s by Sir Basil Spence as two interlocking hexagons, the team look down on Mowbray Park.

This characterful early park was one of the first to be restored using money from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Sunderland’s team did not just manage the project – it did all the design work itself.

This is typical of a landscape department that seems to buck the trends. Sunderland has always been a staunchly Labour council, and it just does not believe in outsourcing. The landscape team is smaller than it was but still healthy. It has won awards, is designing a huge range of work and is generally esteemed both within and beyond the local authority. How has it done it?

Firstly, the team itself is strong.

There are three landscape architects and two technicians. Although all three landscape architects appreciate the importance of working in a local authority, they have also spent time in the private sector, and they have an entrepreneurial attitude. ‘We get 50 Landscape Summer 2015

heavily involved in the production of bids and masterplanning for external funding,’ said Phil Dorian, one of the landscape architects. This means that the team brings in money for a lot of projects that it could not fund purely from the council budgets.

But the council itself, and in particular its elected members, plays a vital part.

There is a commitment to and understanding of the importance of landscape. Councillor Mel Speding, who is cabinet secretary for the council and whose responsibilities include regeneration, said, ‘The political commitment is still there. There is a genuine commitment to carry it forward.’

Sunderland has a history of massive restoration projects, such as the creation of Herrington Country Park and Hetton Lyons Country Park, both developed on the sites of former coalfields. Now the projects are smaller – and so are the budgets. ‘Given the austerity measures since 2010 it has been difficult but we have just tried to continue as best we can,’ Mel said.

‘We spend money on trees because it is good for the city, it gives an instant effect and it is good for the future.’

Particularly in the eastern part of Sunderland, the city is spending money on replacing an ageing tree stock, with

ash coming to the end of its life and many whitebeam struggling as well.

It helps that Mel understands the field himself, having worked in the private sector in landscape for 17 years, when he was a member of BALI. The council is therefore committing capital resources to landscape, but what about maintenance? David Groark, the area response manager for responsive local services, said, ‘Maintenance is changing. There used to be different departments for cleaning and for parks, but we put it all together. As a result we have got a more diverse skills base, and standards have risen. We have engaged more with community groups and friends groups to see what is required. We have become more dynamic and responsive.’

The team has reached a point where many skilled people are approaching retirement, and the council has tackled this by setting up what David describes as ‘a really good apprenticeship scheme’.

The apprentices are working alongside the established staff and, as a result of the scheme, several have gained full-time jobs.

It will not be surprising to learn that the council is also calling on the involvement of volunteers. It has prioritised certain parks and other

Images ©: – Sunderland City Council

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facilities to receive more intensive maintenance. In areas which are less of a priority, it is combining a light touch with working with volunteers.

Michael Mordey, another member of the council, said, ‘We are looking to voluntary schemes to step up to work alongside us, to adopt plants and so on, and to take a bigger role in maintenance. There are areas that could be maintained with a lower skills base, where voluntary groups are following a programme of works that we devise.’

In five years we will see a remarkable transformation.

Images ©: – Sunderland City Council

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There is a worry that so much in the civic realm is now becoming the responsibility of volunteers that we could simply run out of voluntary effort, but Mel sees this kind of volunteering as being in a strong tradition of the area. All the heavy industries, such as coal, shipbuilding, the brewery and glassworks, had welfare organisations, he said, and these would have their own football teams and other sports facilities. All maintenance was voluntary. When these industries collapsed, many of the facilities were taken over by the local authority. Now what it is doing, Mel says, is simply asking people to go back to the kind of volunteering that they did in the past.

2, 3, 4 – Schools are an important area of work.

Seen here is Columbia Grange Special School.

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This is just one of the ways in which the city is making the most of the money it has. It has also leveraged money from beyond its coffers, both through its success in winning grants and through partnerships with the private sector. In the city centre, which is very much a work in progress, combining exciting projects with run-down areas, it set up a business improvement district (BID) last year to, as David put it, ‘create a cleaner, greener, safer space for business people.’ They have, for example, introduced planters and hanging baskets in the city centre and, David said, ‘We have a really good relationship with traders.’

Last November Sunderland set up a joint venture company with Igloo and Carillion called Siglion to provide development and asset management in the city centre which has also bought a portfolio of property for redevelopment.

The plan is to carry out at least £100 million worth of development in the next eight years. ‘In five years we will see a remarkable transformation,’ said Michael. ‘The forward plan is absolutely fantastic.’

There is a close relationship within the council between landscape architecture and planning. Dan Hattle is the planning and implementation manager within the council’s planning and property services and part of his role is to act as the client body for projects that the landscape architects carry out. Until recently, the landscape /...

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Landscape Summer 2015 51

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architecture team reviewed all relevant planning applications, but latterly, when it switched to being entirely fee earning, it has reduced this role so that it only deals with very large projects.

Hattle’s team has a wide skills base, including two ecologists, two conservation officers, two urban designers and three regeneration planners, but there is a feeling in the landscape team that some subtle appreciations may be lost.

Still they have plenty to get on with.

Projects range from a city-centre square to park restoration to revitalisation of the seafront. The team have picked up a slew of awards and, such is their expertise, they are also advising other local authorities. If one were working as a landscape architect for Sunderland, it would be with the knowledge that the future is uncertain and that, however committed the council might be to retaining standards, there was an uncertain future ahead. But it would also mean having a fascinating variety of work and the knowledge that one was appreciated both from within and outside the organisation. Things could be much worse.

There is a close relationship within the council between landscape architecture and planning.

CASE STUDIES Keel Square If a new civic square sounds like a good but not adventurous idea, think again. The new Keel Square is radically transforming an area of the city centre.

In addition to providing a gathering place for events that was sadly lacking, it gives a far greater sense of arrival to people coming into the city and also helps reconnect the centre to a derelict site that represents one of the hopes for the future.

The former Vaux brewery sits on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. After the council fought off attempts by Tesco to develop the site (the supermarket now has a large store further from the centre), it became one of the sites to be developed by the Carillion-IglooSunderland joint venture, to provide office space that should generate much-wanted employment.

But the road that divided the site from the centre was unattractive and blighted the centre. The council therefore realigned the road (‘the landscape team led the highways engineers,’ said landscape architect James Gordon) with planting along the centre line that includes 83 mature trees, predominantly planes and Metasequoia.

The new square, which highlights the brick magnificence of the Edwardian magistrates’ court, will be paved predominantly in sandstone and granite. An art feature will cross the square, cross the road, pass through the brewery site and go all the way to the cliff overlooking the river. Known as the Keel Line and designed by graphic artist Bryan Talbot, it will be 292m

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Images ©: 5 – Broadbent Studio

5 –Propellers of the City, designed by Stephen Broadbent for Keel Square.

6 – Local graffiti artist Creative Ginger designed the ‘inside’ of the whale 7 – The whale playground at Roker, a hefty piece of concrete, has been preserved and updated 8 – The new seafront at Roker 9 – Close to the city centre, Roker’s seafront has become an important local resource.

long, the length of the longest ship ever built in Sunderland, and will be inscribed with the names, arranged by date, of the ships built there. Kevin Johnson, principal landscape architect, said, ‘I had to proof-read all the names, and it was one of the most enjoyable things I have ever done at work’.

At the square end, the start of the Keel Line will be marked by another artwork, designed by Stephen Broadbent and called Propellers of the City. Made of bronze and glass, it will incorporate photographs of former shipyard workers.

At the other end, the Keel Line will terminate in a lookout over the river, a suspended structure that should be popular at all times but particularly when the Tall Ships Race comes to Sunderland in 2018.

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Images ©: – Sunderland City Council

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Roker and Seaburn Last year, Sunderland Council won an RTPI award for its work on Seaburn and Roker seafronts. The award was for ‘excellence in planning and design for the public realm’. What it has done is taken two run-down seaside areas very much within the city (they are walkable from the centre if you are feeling energetic) and given them a considered and impressive sprucing up. Work at Roker is largely complete; there is still a considerable amount to do in Seaburn.

Dan Hattle said, ‘We recognised as a council that the seafront needed investment, that we could have been doing a lot better. We looked at places like Seaham and South Shields. We saw we could do something great but that we needed pump priming.’

The city managed to get money first from Sea Change and then from the Coastal Communities Fund. Phil Dorian, one of the landscape team, /...

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10 – Simple strong forms and materials give Roker’s seafront a contemporary feel.

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artist Creative Ginger to come up with a decorative solution.

Seaburn, in contrast, has the main road running through it at almost beach level. The team has introduced traffic calming between two roundabouts and, on the pavement, a kind of shared surface for use by pedestrians and cyclists – but not cars. A new restaurant is being built on the seafront and the area should have a new heart and spirit.

Mowbray Park The restoration of Mowbray Park was the first HLF-funded project that the council team won and executed.

‘We showed that we could do it,’ Kevin said, commenting on the fact that local authorities are normally expected to win these bids with an external landscape architect.

One of the earliest municipal parks in the north-east, Mowbray opened in 1857, with an extension a decade later.

It incorporates a former quarry and a railway cutting, giving it a surprisingly

We saw we could do something great but we needed pump priming

Images ©: – Sunderland City Council

said, ‘We got highly involved in the production of bids and masterplanning. We managed to get £1 million for Seaburn.’

Both places, which are adjacent but connected only at road level, not on the beach, have been conceived as relatively low-key facilities – as leisure spots for locals rather than as major attractions. And they are all the better for that.

The seafront at Roker sits at the base of a cliff, so that it benefits from quiet but is also somewhat cut off.

The regeneration therefore includes the provision of new public lavatories at the level of the marine walk. Both areas have high-quality surfacing and imaginative planting. The projects include the use of ‘cannonball limestone’, characteristic of the area.

In Roker, the team has rethought a play area, but kept a giant concrete whale that formed a key part of it. This would have been difficult to demolish and was well loved. Instead the school children worked with local graffiti

11 – Dramatic landforms add interest at Mowbray Park.

12 – You can see the council offices from Mowbray Park.

13 – Mowbray Park – away from it all in the city centre.

14 – A sculpture made from a fallen tree in Barnes Park.

dramatic topography for a city centre park – a little like the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris.

It couldn’t be nearer to the civic centre – in fact that building was built on part of the park.

Despite the park’s illustrious history, it fell into disrepair and was seen as dangerous to use. The council received an HLF grant of £3.3 million in 1994 and the park re-opened in 2000.

New additions include a playground with an Alice in Wonderland theme, as Kevin learnt that Lewis Carroll had strong connections to the area.

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Images ©: – Sunderland City Council

It is now a delight to walk in, a city-centre oasis whose winding paths allow you to lose yourself. The HLF described the park as ‘the jewel in the crown of the city-centre restoration’.

Barnes Park Another £3 million from the HLF funded the restoration of Barnes Park, which started in 2009 and was completed in phases. This park, about a mile from the city centre and constructed at the end of the 19th and start of the early 20th ceuntry, had become considerably overgrown, so that part of the restoration work involved the removal of trees. A brook in the park had to be cleared out and /...

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Practice

renewed, and there is a new children’s playground and a winter garden.

This is an ambitious project and some elements are not entirely successful, but will doubtless be moderated in time. Overall however the team has created an enjoyable place for repose and relaxation. To have a few failings as a result of trying too hard, or enjoying new ideas, is the best kind of error.

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Images ©: – Sunderland City Council

15 – In contrast to Mowbray Park, Barnes Park has areas with an abundance of flowers.

16 – Sensory garden at Barnes Park.

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Culture

By Ruth Slavid

Brenda Colvin archive Brenda Colvin effectively had two careers, one before and one after World War Two. The donation of her archive to the Landscape Institute Archive at MERL is a great resource for enthusiasts and scholars.

A

Images ©: – Landscape Institute/MERL

1 – Brenda Colvin

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major addition has been made to the Landscape Institute archive at MERL (the Museum of English Rural Life) in Reading, with the generous donation of the Brenda Colvin archive.

Hal Moggridge, who was Brenda Colvin’s partner in Colvin & Moggridge, and who was responsible for the donation, believes that the importance of the archive extends beyond Brenda Colvin’s significance as a designer.

‘What seemed valuable was that the archive is quite big,’ he said. ‘If somebody wants to know how most people worked, there is enough material to get an idea of how work was carried out. It has already become historically interesting with all the paper and tracing paper.’

The size of the archive did however mean that it needed a home that could accommodate it. When the archive was installed at MERL in 2013, this seemed ideal. ‘Before the move,’ Hal said, ‘the Landscape Institute hadn’t really got the capacity to absorb a large amount of material. This donation would have swamped it.’

It is the combination of volume and quality that makes the Brenda Colvin archive so valuable. She had, effectively, two careers and her partnership with the much younger Hal Moggridge in the second one means that, unusually, there is somebody still Landscape Summer 2015 59

Culture

2 – Image of Sutton Courtney Manor, Berkshire, for client David Astor, c1948–1952 3 – Chateau Zywice in Poland, 1936

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Images ©: – Landscape Institute/MERL

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4 – Chateau Zywice in Poland, 1936 5 – Early business card of Brenda Colvin

Images ©: – Landscape Institute/MERL

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alive who recalls working with a woman who was born in 1897.

The first part of Colvin’s career was before World War Two. Born in India, where her father was a senior administrator, she trained in garden design at Swanley College (now Hadlow College) and set up her own practice in 1922. She shared an office with that other towering female figure of 20th century landscape design, Sylvia Crowe, but they never actually worked together.

Both women became presidents of the Landscape Institute, an institution that Colvin had co-founded in 1929.

Colvin’s work in the pre-war years was almost entirely on private gardens, both in the UK and overseas. One of her most significant projects was Archduke Charles Albert Habsburg’s garden at Zywiec in Poland, designed in the late 1930s. It was the fact that this garden was overrun by German troops during the war, and then became a German barracks, that in part influenced her decision after the war to move into public sector work, which she felt had a greater chance of surviving. /...

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Culture

In the mid-1960s, after a period of illness, Colvin decided to retire. She bought a house at Filkins in Lechlade, Gloucestershire and created a garden for it. But this was not enough for her and, despite by then being around 70, she decided to go back into practice, operating from home. In 1969, the Jellicoes introduced her to the much younger Hal Moggridge (he was only 33), and she asked him to go into practice with her. ‘She was really active for about five years,’ he said. Before she died in 1981, she asked Chris Carter to join the practice and the foundations were set for the future. She left the house and garden to the practice.

Although a lot of the Colvin material was lost during the war, there was still a substantial archive, including negatives of photographs that were taken pre-War. The practice eventually moved out of the house, which was let independently, and into a converted outbuilding. The archive was stored in a building that was little more than a shed.

6 – The ‘shed’ in which the archive was stored.

7 – Remaining material in the shed, showing the storage approach.

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This shed was quite damp, but this proved to be the salvation of the pre-War photo-graphic negatives. Too often these are stored in dry central heating, and they dry out resulting in the emulsion peeling off. The Brenda Colvin negatives, with their damper storage, were in near pristine condition, making it possible to print from them.

And the archive was not disordered.

‘It was quite well catalogued,’ Hal Moggridge said. ‘If anybody enquired about a job, we could find the drawings.

But it just sat there. The written material just sat in heaps in metal files.’

Having partially retired, becoming a consultant to the practice, Hal decided to put the material in order and to /...

62 Landscape Summer 2015

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Image ©: 6, 7 – Hal Moggridge

The Brenda Colvin negatives were in near pristine condition

8 – Drawing of the Oxford Bishopric, New See House, Cuddesdon 1964 9 – Detail of a drawing of the Queen Elizabeth Gardens, Salisbury, 1959

Images ©: – Landscape Institute/MERL

8

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Landscape Summer 2015 63

Culture

Rarely has an archive come to MERL in such a well-organised state.

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10, 11 – Brenda Colvin’s garden, Little Peacocks Garden, Filkins, nr Lechlade, Gloucestershire, 1981

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11

Images ©: – Landscape Institute/MERL

donate it to MERL. ‘I thought it was rather important,’ he said. ‘Otherwise it would have been thrown away. I did a lot of weeding out. I spent about two or three months on it, and catalogued it in an amateur way.’

Guy Baxter, university archivist at Reading, disagrees about the amateur approach. He said, ‘Rarely has an archive come to us in such a well-organised state. I would like to pay tribute to Hal Moggridge for his dedication in ensuring that so much care went into preserving Brenda Colvin’s legacy. As a result, future generations of scholars and practitioners will benefit from having a beautifully organised record of Colvin’s work’.

Doing this work has led Hal Moggridge to think back about Brenda Colvin’s work, its significance and even her shortcomings. ‘She was always slightly ahead of Sylvia Crowe in terms of thought,’ he said, ‘but she hadn’t got her gift for people. She hadn’t got her excellent way with clients. But Brenda was rather grand and so she could get work with private clients.’ In her public sector work she developed a long-standing relationship with the CEGB (Central Electricity Generating Board) and had other significant clients such as acting as landscape architect for Aldershot. Despite her social awkwardness, this was a highly significant career.

Guy Baxter at MERL is evidently delighted to have her archive, and sees a synergy in it being there. ‘Brenda Colvin would, I hope, be happy to know that her archive is alongside that of the Landscape Institute, which she led, and that of Sylvia Crowe, with whom she shared an office,’ he said.

‘There are other links to archives held here at Reading, which we have just started to uncover. For instance,

among the papers of the Open Spaces Society will be plenty on the campaign to preserve Wimbledon Common in the nineteenth century. Colvin worked on a landscaping scheme for parts of the common alongside Madeline Agar during the 1920s. Colvin also undertook design work at Sutton Courtenay Manor for David Astor: the archives of his parents, Waldorf and Nancy Astor, of Cliveden, are also at Reading.’

The Friends of the Landscape Library and Archive at Reading (FOLAR) have already held a study day on Brenda Colvin at which Hal Moggridge spoke and where elements from the archive were on display. While MERL has to be selective in what it can accept, this large and significant archive is enriching the worlds of landscape and of scholarship.

Landscape Summer 2015 65

A Word

By Tim Waterman

‘Inevitable’

THERE ARE

so many things in the world that we have come to believe are inevitable and which, because of their apparent certainty, we can comfortably base our arguments upon. These inevitabilities can be quasimystical, such as the ‘invisible hand’ of the market, homely but ominous aphorisms like the one about ‘death and taxes’, or political expedients with hidden profit motives for the elites, such as the ‘need’ for austerity politics.

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I have seen countless presentations in recent years that have based their arguments about landscape and urbanism on a couple of assumptions that are presented as inevitable but are certainly not, and which bear examination. The first is that human population will continue to grow, and the second is that the forces of urbanisation are everywhere relentless. These ‘inevitabilities’ are then presented as the bases for planning and policy on all scales from local to global.

The one thing that’s actually certain about both of these factors, though, is their very uncertainty.

The four horsemen of the apocalypse are always saddled up and ready to ride roughshod over population growth, and we might witness a ‘re-ruralisation’ of populations for any number of reasons, from high property prices driving people out of world cities like London and New York, for example, to a scenario in which people have to return to working the land because of a need for more labour-intensive methods resulting from such true inevitabilities as the exhaustion of finite resources in agriculture.

The other thing we forget is that human populations and their geographic distribution are not just the basis for planning and policy, but are rightfully the subject of planning and policy in and of themselves.

I believe now that, in Britain as elsewhere, we need to begin to push back against these ‘inevitabilities’.

If urbanisation continues to empty our countryside, decisions about how land is used will increasingly be made by the landed gentry and/or huge agribusiness concerns who have no interest in places apart from their productivity, efficiency, and value as financial instruments (or, in the case of the gentry, as a scenic backdrop for shooting). Rural areas need to be populated by people with a stake in and stewardship of the land so that they are ecologically healthy, fulfilling, convivial and supportive places to live.

We also need to reverse the process of the North’s emptying out into the Southeast. That will take prolonged efforts to ensure there are strong local economies, pleasant places, and meaningful work everywhere. This will need local planning, design, and funding everywhere – and small local landscape practices of all sorts from ecological to architectural everywhere too. We must replace the inevitability of austerity politics with the emergence of a hopeful and positive prosperity politics for city and country, north and south. Hope and idealism, far from being immature, are hallmarks of a sane and mature society. What we should make inevitable are prosperity, well-being, and the creation of great places everywhere and for everyone.

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Image ©: – Agnese Sanvito

One of Margaret Thatcher’s slogans that still rules us today was TINA – ‘There Is No Alternative’ – which tried to present the resurgence of cynical winner-takes-all capitalism, championed by her government, as inevitable. Austerity politics is just the most recent incarnation of this particular agenda, which also supports the now-familiar equation of hope and idealism with immaturity.

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