8 minute read
The SGD Lifetime Achievement Award 2021
ABOVE: the B&Q garden, in conjunction with The Princes’ Youth Business Trust, Gold Medal winner and winner of the Wilkinson Sword Trophy Best in Show at RHS Chelsea in 1990. BELOW: acclaimed modernist garden for Citroën at RHS Hampton Court in 1998.
‘THE BEST IS STILL TO COME’
Recipient of the SGD’s 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award, David Stevens FSGD, 11-times RHS Chelsea Gold medal-winning designer, author, educator and broadcaster, talks to Arabella St.John Parker about design heroes, crazy paving, and the garden that got away
Afew weeks before the SGD Awards ceremony in London last year, I travelled down to Bristol to meet Professor David Stevens FSGD FCI Hort., to talk to him about his career in garden design. As we sat in a garden that he had recently reworked and extended for a cherished client, I began by asking him about his early memories of gardening.
It seems like a long time ago but
I am a Cornishman and we lived on the coast so I remember being on the beach and as I walked back to our house, I would see plants such as Euonymus and Valerian, although I had no idea what they were then, and everywhere, marigolds – what a lovely colour they are. Dad was a keen vegetable grower and Mum liked pottering in the garden, but they were not gardeners, and I never had a revelation that I was going to be a gardener or garden designer.
In which case, what career path did you think you might take?
People never really talked about career choices at that time, and certainly no one talked about gardens or landscaping. My first job was in marine underwriting followed by a brief spell in the police force before working as a technical rep for a gold leaf supplier.
What brought you into landscape design?
I eventually joined a landscape gardening practice when the owner, who I played squash with, asked if I could do some design drawings for him. When the practice went bust, I set up on my own in 1972, building gardens, doing crazy paving, laying turf, and it was then that I knew that I wanted to design.
David Stevens
Professor David Stevens FSGD FCI Hort, recipient of the Society of Garden Designer’s 2021 Lifetime Achievement of the Year Award. david-stevens.co.uk
I joined a five-year, day-release course at Thames Polytechnic and in my first year, architects and landscape architects all studied together; I found the landscape architecture much more interesting so decided to take that route. I met some good friends there – Arabella Lennox-Boyd was on the same course, as was John Moreland – and we had some wonderful tutors, including Preben Jakobsen, a Danish landscape architect of serious merit and one of the best plantsmen in Europe at that time.
After graduating, I joined John Brookes as a landscape designer for three years at Syon Park. That was wonderful; it was the National Gardening Centre and everybody in the trade would gather there. It was a fantastic introduction to the world of horticulture and also to celebrities, actors, and pop groups, who used Syon for filming.
What was the state of landscape design in Britain at that point?
It was still very much in its infancy. Unlike America and on the Continent, we had no modern movement to speak of and although there was plenty of post-war town development work around, it was the landscape architects who did all the big stuff; Brenda Colvin, Geoffrey Jellicoe, Dame Sylvia Crowe…they were our superstars. I was fortunate to work with a number of them and was thrilled to bits when Susan Jellicoe, plantswoman, writer and editor of Landscape Design, and Geoffrey’s wife, asked if she could include some of my designs in one of her books.
What inspires your work?
It comes from any and everywhere, and it changes all the time – I always say to students, never stop looking. For me it began with art, architects and architecture, and more recently, writing; meeting authors gives you a whole new spin on the perspective of life.
Who are your design heroes?
Heroes are always important; you need someone to look up to, to gain experience from. Mine were landscape architects such as Daniel Kiley, Garrett Eckbo, Thomas Church, and Christopher Tunnard, a Canadian landscape architect who wrote a remarkable book called Gardens in the Modern Landscape. Church’s statement that ‘Gardens are for people’, is as true now as it was then.
I also admired Frank Lloyd Wright hugely. An organic architect and a total designer, his houses were built to rise up out of, and were sited in relation to, the landscape. On my own drawings, I only ever put ‘designer’ because that is what I think you should be.
What should a welldesigned garden be?
It should suit the client; it is their garden, not yours, and it should fit them like a glove. You should never superimpose your will on their garden. We need to respect, guide and embrace both the client and the site, blending their needs into one to create a garden that, whatever its size, is personal and sensitive, and links with the house and the landscape beyond. We also need to remember that architecture is inseparable from garden design: house, garden and landscape are meshed tightly together. Architects do not always understand that; they create a stunning steel and glass building and then design something to sit around it that they call a garden but of course, it is not. Garden design is a skilled, professional art form that cannot be separated from the landscape or from the architecture.
Which projects make you most proud?
You should be proud of all of your work; if not, then there is something wrong. Obviously, over the years though, there will be gardens that are particularly
ABOVE: South African Airway Garden, Gold Medal winner at the Cape Town Flower Show in 2006. BELOW: florist’s beads used as ground cover/lawn, show garden for Citröen at RHS Hampton Court in 1998.
TOP: ‘the one that got away’, David’s design for a commemorative garden for the Princess of Wales. ABOVE AND BELOW: ‘The Anniversary Garden: A Brief History of Modern Gardens’, for BBC Gardener’s World Live 2017. special to you. One that stands out in my mind is my design for a commemorative garden for the Princess of Wales, to be sited at the Royal National Rose Society Gardens in St Albans, with funding from America. That unfortunately dried up after 9/11 but as with every design, I put everything into it, and I walked that garden in my mind a thousand times because that is what a designer does.
As a member of the SGD from the start, in 1981, what were your hopes and expectations for the Society?
I am not sure any of us really knew but the number of garden designers was starting to grow and there was no cohesion. There was no formal way of gaining knowledge or education, or somewhere we could come together to discuss and share ideas and experience, but Robin Williams (1935–2018) had the foresight to see the need for an organisation that would bind all those things together and create an adjudicated path for us all.
What about key moments in garden design during the last 40 years?
When I started, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show was the main event really and the members of the plant and flower societies created the displays, but they knew very little about design. The SGD has helped the RHS to bring in the people who understand design, and also to introduce assessment of design and as a result, shows have been an enormous driver in the development of the Society and how gardens are built.
Books about gardening have also changed hugely; John Brooke’s book, Room Outside, was the first real design book and its effect on gardening and publishing has been dramatic; I have written 22 of them myself!
Styles and planting, and the way we use materials have all changed, as has the way we look at gardens, helped by designers appearing on radio and television – shows such as the BBC’s Gardeners’ World and my Gardenwise and Gardens by Design series.
How do you feel about garden design at the moment?
We are at an exciting crossroads and the future is bright. The environment is driving us and encouraging us to put less emphasis on expensive products and surfaces that are hard, shiny and slippery, and more on plants and natural and recycled materials that make us feel comfortable living outside.
We need to be aware of climate change and of the importance of gardens for drainage and using planting to attract wildlife into the garden. I also think we need to look at hard landscaping products and their effect on our gardens. I will not use porcelain paving, for instance; it is a product that requires high-energy manufacture and shipping. Why not use locally sourced natural stone, or locally manmade stone? I am making a new garden for my 1930s home at the moment and years ago, I would have ripped half of it out and put it into the skip but today, a wonderful old concrete serpentine path is staying as part of the design, and the buried stone will become paving and walling.
What advice would you give to young designers? Be inspired, but never copy. And remember that the gardens are not yours – they belong to your customer; you are the facilitator.
