Landscape Journal - Spring 2013

Spring 2013

landscapeinstitute.org

The Journal of the Landscape Institute

This issue: Heritage and its role in our futures Heather and Hillforts

An object lesson in working with stakeholders Blueprint for Brockhole

Planit-IE rethinks a Lake District visitor centre Urban parks

A pull out poster on the world’s best and most influential John Hopkins remembered

Tributes to the man behind the Olympic Park

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Landscape Spring 2013

Contents Spring 2013 Publisher Darkhorse Design and Advertising Ltd 42 Hamilton Square, Birkenhead Wirral, Merseyside. CH41 5BP T 0151 649 9669 www.darkhorsedesign.co.uk

Regulars

Editor Ruth Slavid landscape@darkhorsedesign.co.uk Managing director, Darkhorse Tim Coleman tim@darkhorsedesign.co.uk

Editorial 5

Design director Richard Sargent Production director Clare Moseley Senior artworker Jon Allinson Editorial advisory panel Tim Waterman, honorary editor Merrick Denton-Thompson CMLI Edwin Knighton CMLI Jo Watkins PPLI Jenifer White CMLI John Stuart Murray FLI Ian Thompson CMLI Jill White CMLI Eleanor Trenfield Amanda McDermott Landscape Institute president Sue Illman PLI LI director of policy and communications Paul Lincoln Membership enquiries Charles Darwin House 12 Roger Street London WC1N 2JU T 020 7685 2651 Twitter @talklandscape www.landscapeinstitute.org

Subscribe to Landscape Keep up to date with the latest thinking and the most interesting schemes in the UK and overseas.

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Landscape is the official journal of the Landscape Institute, ISSN: 1742–2914 ©February 2013 Landscape Institute. Landscape is published four times a year by Darkhorse.

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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.

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An interest in heritage does not have to be backward looking

Features Heather and Hillforts

24 An object lesson in working

with stakeholders

John Hopkins 6

Tributes to the man behind the Olympic Park

Bigger picture 10 Artist Konstantin Dimopoulos is

turning trees blue

Debate 12 Two landscape architects and an

architect discuss the impact of heritage on park design

News analysis 17 How and where the Heritage Lottery

Fund is supporting landscape

Blueprint for Brockhole

31 Planit-IE rethinks a Lake District

visitor centre

Technical 1 43 Spot and avoid disease

in trees

Technical 2 47 Latest thinking on the selection

and nurture of trees

Practice 1 52 Johanna Gibbons explains the

value of engagement

Practice 2 55 What BIM means for

landscape architects

Knowledge

Urban parks

37 A pull out poster on the world’s

best and most influential

58 An update on recent changes

in legislation

Culture 60 Ben Mawson’s site-specific musical

compositions legislation

A word...

62 Tim Waterman delves

into greenspace

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Editorial

by Ruth Slavid Editor

Looking forward to heritage

1 — Ruth Slavid.

Singapore, created for one of the world’s least nostalgic nations on a platform that has been built out into the harbour. It has already been covered by Landscape but it reappears in this issue as part of our visual representation of the history of parks, researched by Newcastle University academic Ian Thompson and beautifully designed and illustrated by David Atkinson.

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Photo ©: 1 — Agnese Sanvito.

T

he last issue of Landscape was

in large part a celebration of the

Olympic Park, and included an

interview with John Hopkins, the guiding light behind the landscape achievement. John was full of energy and ideas, was teaching in the US and researching a book, and making plans for the future. It was a huge shock to his family, friends and colleagues and those who simply admired his work when he died unexpectedly at the start of this year.

The esteem in which he was held is indicated by the comments on the story that appeared on the LI website, and this issue contains a tribute written by some of those who knew him best at different stages in his career. I hope you find them

as touching, informative and occasionally surprising as I did.

Looking back over the life of someone like John Hopkins allows us to take stock of the achievements of the last few years.

But Hopkins was looking forward, and so must the landscape profession. If anyone ever thought working with heritage was about being backward looking, I hope that this issue, which has a strong heritage theme running through it, will persuade them otherwise. After all, in some senses, every landscape has a heritage unless it is created from made-up land in a place with no context.

The nearest that one comes to that situation is with the Gardens by the Bay in

This ‘mind map’ represents one aspect of the evolution of the journal. Our aim is on the one hand to stimulate and develop readers’ ideas, on the other to provide useful knowledge – whether an update on knowledge about using trees or a listing of latest relevant legislation - to help practitioners do their jobs better.

Like the best landscapes, the journal has to develop in order to prosper. As well as continuing to adjust the content that we provide, we have also looked at the format in which we provide it. There have been some design changes to the magazine which we hope you will enjoy and which should aid legibility. In addition you can now read the journal online at www.landscapeinstitute.org/journal or in an ipad edition which will be available to download shortly from Apple’s iTunes store. We would love to hear your responses and your ideas for future content. Please email me on landscape@darkhorsedesign.co.uk Landscape Spring 2013

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John Hopkins

John Hopkins remembered The sudden and unexpected death of John Hopkins in January at the age of 59 has saddened the profession. On these pages some of those who knew him best remember a man who had achieved so much, and had so much still to achieve.

Peter Neal

J

ohn Hopkins was a true

professional; focused, applied, well connected, almost always calm

under pressure and never afraid to say what he believed. I first met him on the shop floor of Clouston’s London office in ’89 and soon realised he was not one to take life too seriously. For me, and many others, he has been a rich mix of colleague, mentor, ally, co-writer and trusted friend.

His influences were extensive and most definitely American-centric, including John Dewey, the philosopher, and Herman Daley, a pioneer of environmental economics. More recently he became a close friend of the celebrated urban planner and public parks expert Alexander Garvin, who he met whilst travelling on a

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Churchill Fellowship. But the list must also include Gary Larson and Tommy Cooper for, much to the consternation of his colleagues, John loved a good gag.

Highly adept at working across scales — S, M, L, XL and even XXL — he clearly understood the need to connect landscapes to make them work properly.

A retrospective would contain many highlights. S - the fine-grained crafting of the Newcastle Draw Dock on the Isle of Dogs. M - his pro-bono advocacy for the de-culverting of the Quaggy River that ran at the end of his garden in south-east London and led on to the ground-breaking Sutcliffe Park. L - his work on the Olympics, for which much has been written. XL - his central role in framing and structuring the East London Green Grid, and on through to XXL which includes his significant contribution in developing the framework for the Thames Gateway Parklands.

Much of this was achieved through committed collaboration with a broad professional network that he maintained faithfully throughout his career. He relished opportunities to push boundaries and was tireless in refining the detail. He gained a reputation for taking clients and colleagues well beyond their comfort zone to gain as much from a project as possible.

It was a trait he occasionally adopted when pitching for work, which wasn’t always received as well as it was intended.

Clearly the Olympic Park was John’s tour de force. He would be the first to acknowledge that its success is attributed to many, but for John it was his Quaggy writ large. It took the earlier themes of an integrated and multifunctional landscape and played them out on the larger and far higher-profile canvas of the lower Lea. He relished the opportunity to demonstrate practically what he had been seeking to achieve through the strategic park systems and green grids of the wider Thames Estuary.

A tribute from James Corner, who encouraged John’s return to the States, emphasised that ‘a large part of the success of the Olympic Park is owed to John’s unwavering tenacity and commitment to excellence. His subsequent time as visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design saw him bring that same level of passion and deep, deep knowledge of the field into the purview of students and the larger field.

He cared so very much, and will be dearly missed’.

But the Olympic Park may not have been John’s greatest legacy. Bang on schedule, and just ten days before he died, he submitted the first two chapters of The Global Garden. It was to be his vision for a new ecologically centred economy and infrastructure to replace the worn-out and energy-hungry infrastructures of past

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1 — John Hopkins.

centuries. Landscape architects, he argued, must be at the heart of this process, for it is the profession’s skills that are critical to building beautiful and truly sustainable communities of the future.

And how exactly would that be achieved? I bet he would answer — ‘Just like that’.

Peter Neal is a landscape architect, landscape consultant and a fellow of the Landscape Institute

Annie Coombs

Photo ©: 1 — Barret Doherty.

F

ootball fan, musician, wordsmith,

thinker, team player, visionary.

This was John Hopkins. I first met

him in the mid ’80s when we were both working in Hong Kong for the Clouston office. One of the projects on which we worked together was Wo Hop Shek Interchange. It was part of a new town’s infrastructure, close to a huge cemetery where thousands of people came to pay respects to their ancestors and to sweep graves twice a year. We wanted it to reflect the Chinese culture, respect the spirituality of the area without resorting to pastiche. John pushed the bounds of the design; I pushed the engineers to let us include our (mainly his) ideas.

Come the ’90s John seemed more assertive in his deeply held beliefs in

sustainability, more serious about the ethics of what the profession was doing.

Maybe this emanated from time at university in the States, or recessiondriven business pressures and certainly fatherhood. He cared passionately about Rosie and Jack. Whatever it was; he still liked a pint, still supported Blackburn Rovers (or Liverpool if Rovers was losing) and was still making music (at this time with Brian Clouston’s son William).

He was thoughtful, quietly determined, persuasive, tenacious, and poetic.

There was an underlying steeliness and hardness that sometimes surfaced. I’m glad he had these latter characteristics – they will have made all the difference to winning professional battles, of which I am sure there were many on that Olympic park.

That’s where I next worked with John.

Through CABE, I was asked to help support the brief-writing for the landscape architecture commission for the Olympic Park. A gap of 20 years, a reversal of roles — he was the boss this time — but we still worked as a good team; respecting each other’s strengths, communicating well and thinking about people, places, legacy and design.

Annie Coombs is a consultant and enabler and a fellow of the Landscape Institute

Alan Tate

W

hen we first worked

together in the Clouston

Hong Kong office in

the mid 1980s, John was already a model professional. And he showed it when we worked together again in Clouston’s London office in the late 1980s — after John had earned his MLA at Louisiana State — and when we joined Jacob Rothschild’s Clifton Design, and from 1992–97 in our own partnership — Tate | Hopkins — a roller-coaster ride in recession-hit London.

We taught each other everything we knew or thought we knew about public parks before we dissolved the partnership ahead of my move to Canada in 1998. But we never dissolved our friendship.

And in 2006, when I was thinking about returning to work in Britain, John nominated me as project director for the Olympic Parklands. After a telephone interview in early 2007 and a longer than expected wait for a decision, I got a call from John to tell me that, after reading the job description, he decided it was too good an opportunity to miss — and he would be starting the job next month. Even that didn’t destroy our friendship. I thanked him and told him that he’d better not fuck up!

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John Hopkins

The boy done good. The boy done very good. Thank you, John, for everything you did for me and for what you did for London.

Alan Tate

In summer 2011, before he left to start writing about the almost built-out park, he took three of us for a sneak preview ... and after our visit he reminded me of that phone conversation. And he didn’t fuck up. The boy done good. The boy done very good. Thank you, John, for everything you did for me and for what you did for London.

Alan Tate is professor and head of landscape architecture at the University of Manitoba

Neil Mattinson

J

ohn Hopkins, in his role as Project

Sponsor and Director for the

Parklands and Public Realm

London 2012, was LDA Design’s client for four years.

John had been in post for approximately 12 months when we were appointed, during which time he had been working tirelessly to write a landscape design brief for the project which would prove to be the most rigorous and all-encompassing we had ever seen as practitioners.

He drove the necessarily time-poor process at a fierce pace from the outset. His commitment and strength of belief was clear to us all. I recall a number of long day and late evening / early morning design

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sessions in which John participated with us; the debates were often heated with frank exchanges of views from John, but at the close we, as a team, were at one.

One of his uncompromising objectives was not only to create a park that would look stunningly beautiful but also one that must work hard in terms of delivering biodiversity and sustainability and become an essential piece in the jigsaw of the social infrastructure of East London.

We are fortunate and immensely gratified to know that John was able to see and share with us a number of ‘firsts’ for the Olympic Parklands in terms of planning, design, biodiversity and sustainability.

As a client, John was a ‘critical friend’, steering and engaging the team to deliver the best work we had ever done. Nothing short of excellence would be good enough.

The following piece, in John’s own words, is a fitting reminder for all landscape architects of our fundamental raison- d’etre.

‘What we achieve, as landscape architects, is bound only by our personal and collective limitations. Our personal and collective moral authority and power will come from a fully fashioned environmental ethic supported by creativity, technical expertise, political awareness and eloquence. We have a critical vested interest in the creation of good places where we can dwell and where

we and many future generations may live ... for we are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams ... we are the movers and the shakers of the world forever, it seems.’

John Hopkins 2008 Neil Mattinson is senior partner at LDA Design

Marion Bowman

J

ohn was one of the first landscape

architects I met after arriving at the

Landscape Institute. I was on a

mission to understand the profession in order to raise its public profile. A new script was needed to move things on from inward-looking preoccupations with the encroachments of architects and garden designers. Within minutes of meeting him I knew I had found someone who was key to the future.

Wherever anyone looked there was talk of sustainability, climate change, ‘one planet’ living. John brought these abstract ideas to life and was second to none in helping lay people understand what the landscape profession could offer. We talked about making a television series about Britain’s gift to the world of the public park. Whether it was Birkenhead or Bow, John was able to talk authoritatively and accessibly about the social and economic

benefits of landscape and to make listeners see the world, and value life, afresh.

As a Fellow, John was always ready to help with Institute initiatives though completely uninterested in holding office. Later, when I became vice-chair of the Tree Council and he was at the Olympic Delivery Authority, we successfully nominated John to chair the panel that DEFRA set up in 2011 to distribute £4m in grants for tree planting.

His favourite book was Jean Giono’s The Man Who Planted Trees. John had great joie de vivre and, for someone so relaxed, he never wasted a minute, whether he was quaffing beer with relish, composing and playing music, fishing, or reminiscing about his family’s pie business in Lancashire.

Our last contact was during the Olympics when we corresponded about his latest book proposal, The Global Garden, discussing topics as diverse as land grabs in Africa and megacities in China. He was a true public intellectual, combining wide interests and deep knowledge of history, political ideas, and the diversity of life on earth and applying them to his published work, practice, talks and teaching. John took the long view but lived in the present.

He was an inspiration. His legacy in the Olympic Park and elsewhere will sustain many for generations to come.

Marion Bowman was director general of the Landscape Institute from 2005 to 2008

John Hopkins CV Born: 1953 1976 – 1978 1978

Student landscape architect, Central Lancashire Development Corporation Diploma Landscape Architecture, Thames Polytechnic

1978 – 1980

Landscape architect, Central Lancashire Development Corporation

1980 – 1981

Landscape architect, Alam Bina Yuncken Freeman, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

1981 – 1982

Senior landscape architect, Environmental Partnership, Sydney, Australia

1982 – 1985

Brian Clouston and Partners, Hong Kong

1985 – 1986

Louisiana State University, Research MLA (Summa cum Laude) and design tutor, 3rd year studio

1986

Master Landscape Architecture, Louisiana State University (Summa cum laude)

1986 – 1987

Freelance consultant landscape architect, Ben Thompson and Associates, Morice and Gary, Pat Loheed, Boston, Massachusetts

1987 – 1989

Senior landscape architect, Brian Clouston and Partners, London

1989 – 1990

Director, Clifton Design

1990 – 1996

Partner, Tate Hopkins

1996 – 1998

Associate director, EDAW

1998 – 2007

Partner, LDA Design

2007 – 2011

Project director, Olympic Delivery Authority, London

From 2011

Visiting professor, University of Pennsylvania

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Bigger picture

by Ruth Slavid Editor

Blue is the colour

I

n various cities in North America, and on a sculpture trail in New Zealand, trees have turned an eye-searing bright blue. Their trunks and branches are a colour that would never be found in that quantity in nature and that contrasts marvellously with the foliage, whether the green of summer or the yellows and russets of autumn.

The colour makes people look properly at trees for the first time, when too often they may have faded into the background, appreciated for shade or as a place to pin notices about stray cats, but not really thought about. And it is thinking that is the goal of artist Konstantin Dimopoulos, who has created these installations.

‘This social art installation is a global project, carrying a message that needs to be repeated in multiple locations on as many continents as possible.’

We have recently become painfully aware of the state of our trees in the UK. Perhaps we need some blue trees as well to stimulate our thinking?

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Photo ©: 1 — Dave Brown Photography.

Dimopolous says, ‘It is easy to restore the trees we have colored blue back to their natural state. However, without some serious efforts the old species including redwoods, sequoias, kauris, oak, beech and all the classes they support will disappear.

They do not have the option of restoration.

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1 — Blue Tree, West Vancouver BC, Canada by Konstantin Dimopoulos.

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Debate

Does heritage suit our needs?

We have fine historic parks in this country, and thankfully there is still money available for their restoration (see pages 17–22).

But is the interest in heritage restricting our ability to meet contemporary needs? A client and a landscape architect argue that respecting heritage is compatible with satisfying contemporary needs, and an architect who has recently designed a park in Birmingham puts the case for the value that new parks can offer.

Phil Gill

Leisure and green spaces manager, Streetpride, Environment and Development Services, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council

T

he ‘heritage park’ brand is

increasingly in use around the

country, but what should we expect

from such a classification? Does it imply a fossilised landscape, where any

visible evidence of life in the twentieth century is kept at bay? Of course, there is a place for such an approach, as evidenced by the many people who enjoy visiting properties looked after by the National Trust. However, when it comes to managing and restoring a historic public park, is such a static view of heritage appropriate, or even possible?

These questions arose in Rotherham around ten years ago with the development of plans to breathe new life into the town’s second oldest public park. Clifton Park’s landscape had originally been laid out more than a century before its public opening in 1891. Clifton House, now a museum, and surrounding estate was developed for Joshua Walker, owner of a local iron and steel works, in 1784.

From the outset, the vision for the restoration of Clifton Park was driven by the local community, including an active Friends Group. The knowledge and experience of these people brought a richness of meaning to the park. This is heritage, continually evolving and multidimensional, reflecting the diversity of the people who use the park. The notion that a restoration project would just be about preservation of historic features never really took hold; it also called for improvement and innovation to make the park relevant and accessible to the people it serves now and in the future.

Funding for the project came from the ‘Parks for People’ programme run by HLF and BIG Lottery Fund whose aims were aligned perfectly to our preferred approach. With LDA Design as lead consultant, we pursued everything from painstaking conservation to bold contemporary design, reflecting the wide range of values local people placed on different features within the park.

For example, careful surgery was undertaken on the emblematic bandstand to reveal and then treat severe corrosion of its internal steel frame. The main gates to the park, sadly removed and mislaid during World War II, were recreated based on analysis of old photographs.

Elsewhere, a sunken garden dating from the early twentieth century was completely removed, partly to recreate the original setting of Clifton House, but also because of the unsavoury reputation it had gained amongst park users.

Two main elements of the project have reinvented historic features of the park to provide striking modern settings for popular activities. The new walled garden harks back to when the park and house, in private ownership, had a kitchen garden. This now facilitates increased community involvement in the life of the park, including growing of flowers, fruit and vegetables. The water splash continues a long tradition of water play in the park, /...

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Debate cont.

This is heritage, continually evolving and multi-dimensional, reflecting the diversity of the people who use the park

replacing a paddling pool that dated back to 1939 which itself replaced ornamental ponds. Both are designed with the needs and aspirations of people today in mind, and employ modern technology to reduce running costs and environmental impacts.

Heritage is a dynamic force that has guided us in the restoration of Clifton Park. Public reaction to the completed scheme is a measure of the success of this approach.

They have welcomed the new whilst cherishing the old. We hope to have both preserved and enriched the park’s heritage for future generations.

JAMES LORD Director of landscape design, HTA

T

he English landscape is the product

of thousands of years of continuous

occupation. One layer is overlaid

on another as each generation adapts a space to suit its own needs. This is shown at Kenwood where Repton’s landscape incorporates ancient boundary oaks and a Saxon field pattern. This formerly private park is now part of a public landscape, resulting in different demands being placed upon it and pressure from 14

Landscape Spring 2013

visitor numbers. Similarly, William III’s Privy Garden at Hampton Court overlies the remains of an earlier Tudor hunting ground.

At what point does a landscape become frozen in time? Fundamental to our profession is an understanding of the historic significance and sensitivity of not only the heritage of the site but all existing and future identities of the landscape.

Good design must be informed by an understanding of our past and our future.

When the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens lists a space as being of special historic interest this does not amount to a decree that the public realm is to be frozen for eternity. The hope is that listing sites will increase awareness of their value and encourage those who own them, or who have a part to play in their protection, to treat the sites with due care, whether this is a question of carrying out appropriate maintenance or of making changes to the site. So it is certainly envisaged that our system of statutory protection can entertain the possibility of adaptation to the changing needs of society as dictated by constant evolution of culture.

How are we to predict how communities, owners and operators will use a public open space? What pressures, political, social and environmental, will come to influence it?

Public parks and open spaces must remain

flexible, adaptable and accessible, with democracy of use at their core. I would hope that the new spaces we are designing now will be subject to significant change, adaptation, and hopefully improvement.

That is the natural cycle.

I’d say that the purpose of the statutory system is to force decision-makers and designers to weigh appropriately the requirement to create spaces that meet contemporary needs against the importance of society properly recognising the significance of the past. It is certainly true that much has been lost which we now sadly miss because this balance was not given due consideration. But it is also true that much-needed change and enhancement of open space is inhibited by the hidebound misapplication of the heritage principle being used to block that which is good.

At HTA we like to think we are able to discern, celebrate and enhance the best of the past in the heritage parks where we have worked. Our design approach is directed at setting historic features in a context which displays them to their best advantage but at the same time works well for contemporary users, exploiting the ‘layers in the landscape’ to best effect. The approach needs to be thoughtful and sensitive; the solutions simple, legible and robust.

Above all, they make spaces and landscapes that members of the public can enjoy, both individually and collectively

ANDREW TAYLOR Co-founder of architect Patel Taylor

T

here’s great merit in both the

restoration of heritage parks and

the creation of new parks. Existing

parks, particularly in urban locations, can offer a scale of open spaces that could not be replicated now due to land prices and pressure on development.

These great assets should certainly receive investment to make them as good as possible for the public. New parks offer different opportunities. Obviously, they have the potential for great impact, particularly on brownfield sites where there is a dramatic change.

Given the cost of land and potential profits from other forms of development, the site selection for new parks has to be closely linked with strategic urban plans and regeneration, often in conjunction with a wider green infrastructure strategy.

Eastside City Park in Birmingham, a project we have very recently completed, is an example of this approach. The new Eastside Quarter is part of Birmingham’s

Big City Plan, and the park is intended to function as the principal route into the quarter, as a focal point, and as a catalyst for future development and the creation of economic and social value.

Clearly, this project was about initiating a piece of the city, so we first approached it from an urban design point of view.

To make the park work as a piece of infrastructure, it was vital that legible links to the city’s existing roads, pedestrian routes and public transport systems were in place, along with a strategy for pedestrian movement through the park to the surrounding buildings, both existing and future developments.

The next challenge was to bring this framework to life with the design of the hard and soft landscape. The design had to be robust enough to stand alone while it awaits its future built context, whilst being able to accommodate the changing interfaces and use patterns these developments will bring.

In many ways, new parks do allow more freedom in their design than the restoration of heritage parks, but they are far from being blank canvasses.

The importance of urban design and infrastructure has been mentioned, but other factors include the site’s history. On the formerly industrial Eastside site, many of the buildings were demolished to make

way for the new quarter, but key features were retained, such as the grade I listed Curzon Street Station, various grade II listed buildings, and a small existing park which is also a burial ground. These features are directly adjacent to the park, and appropriate settings had to be created. They undoubtedly have added to the richness of the final outcome.

Within the quarter, but slightly further from the park is the Digbeth Branch Canal. Birmingham has an extensive canal system, which in places has been reintegrated to the public realm. An earlier iteration of the park scheme was larger, and made a direct connection to the canal. The design included extensive water features, with a narrative of flowing water, locks and a natural filtration system. This however, relied on Big Lottery funding, which did not materialise, and sadly the connection to the canal was lost.

In summary, new parks do have some advantages over heritage projects. They create additional public space and green infrastructure, and encourage regeneration. They can also provide opportunities for references and narratives about the previous uses of the sites, but above all, they make spaces and landscapes that members of the public can enjoy, both individually and collectively.

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News analysis

By Ruth Slavid

Park life

1 — Alexandra Road Park in 1979, soon after completion.

Parks are one of the few areas of landscape where money is consistently made available, thanks to allocations of funding through the National Lottery. We look at the way money is allotted for these and other landscape projects and at the importance of local involvement.

I Photo ©: 1 — Janet Jack.

n these straitened times there are not many sources of money around so the landscape profession, along with other members of the built environment, should be grateful for the largesse of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). Last autumn it announced its latest new allocation of funding — £70 million for the Parks for People programme which, along with £30 million from BIG, the Big Lottery Fund, makes a total of £100 million to be spent over three years.

Local authorities, community trusts and friends’ groups will be able to access grants ranging from £100,000 to £5 million for the improvement of parks and cemeteries.

And this is neither a one off nor the only money that the organisation makes available. This latest round is the new money that will be available for this particular programme from April 2013,

1

but Parks for People is already an ongoing programme. Previous beneficiaries have ranged from Walpole Park in Ealing, the backdrop to the Grade I listed Pitzhanger Manor, to Victoria Park in St Helens.

Applications are opening now, and since the money will be awarded in two chunks, there are deadlines in February (this month) and August for decisions in June and December.

Another targeted programme is Landscape Partnerships, started in 2004 and offering grants ranging from £100,000 to £3 million.

The programme is for schemes led by partnerships of local, regional and national interests which aim to conserve

areas of distinctive landscape character throughout the UK. An evaluation of the Landscape Partnerships programme in 2011 by the Centre for European Protected Area Research at Birkbeck College, found that ‘Many project activities will result in longterm benefits to our heritage, while there is good evidence to show that the impact on local communities, private landowners, third-sector organisations and statutory agencies as well as a diverse range of individuals, has in some instances been profound and can be expected to endure.

The programme has been effective in delivering “people” benefits at the /...

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News analysis cont.

2 — LUC’s masterplan for Brockwell Park, south London, was HLF funded. 3 — Gorple Reservoir, part of the award-winning Pennine Watershed landscape.

3

same time as conservation outcomes over the natural and built heritage at a landscape scale. The programme depends on local enterprise and is focused on local needs; it leaves a legacy both of conserved heritage and strengthened civil society.’

Areas that have received funding have been as remote as Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands and as built-up as the Medway Valley in the southeast of England. The Pennine Watershed Landscape, which won the 2012 UK Landscape Award last November, is a Landscape Partnership. The next round of funding will be awarded in October, with a deadline of May for applications.

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The targeted programmes provide funding for areas where the HLF has identified that there are specific needs for investment.

But it also has open programmes, under which bodies can apply for money for projects which they believe to be deserving. Our Heritage offers grants ranging from £10,000 to £100,000, with a decision process of eight weeks.

Applications for the current round opened this month. Heritage Grants are larger, ranging from £100,000 to £5 million and, as with Our Heritage, applications have just opened. The decision time is 12 weeks.

There are three things that make grants from the HLF attractive. The first is that

there money available, a result both of people continuing to buy lottery tickets in a recession and of the Government’s decision to increase the proportion of the Lottery’s good causes budget that goes to heritage. As a result, whereas the current strategic plan, written in 2008, allowed for grants of £180 million a year to be available, in 2012–13 the actual sum is £375 million.

The next is that the amount of match funding that the HLF looks for has decreased, in recognition of the difficult financial situation. Whereas once it used to require bidders to provide 25% of the funding, now it only looks for 5% /...

Photo ©: 2 — LUC.

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News analysis cont.

in grants of up to £1 million, and 10% for larger projects. But Drew Bennellick, Head of Landscape and Natural Heritage UK at the HLF, is heartened by the fact that very few applicants in fact ask for the maximum amount — they find sources locally for more than the minimum.

The other cause for celebration is the flexible approach of the HLF. Adrian Wikeley, principal landscape architect with LUC, said, ‘We have worked with the HLF since 1996 on a number of projects.

They have become rather less purist in their approach to the restoration of parks and gardens. This is quite right. It is the people’s money, and they expect it to be spent on projects that have public benefit.’

Bennellick explains that the HLF’s definition of heritage is broader than simply encompassing registered landscapes. ‘It is very much for communities to tell us what they value,’ he says. He is adamant that ‘There is no point in restoring something if it has no modern uses,’ but adds, ‘If you can get people to understand how it has been shaped, you can bring people with you.’ He gives an example of a Victorian park, neglected like so many, where there was a pressure for new paths. But once the original plan had been explained, with its hierarchy of carriage paths, promenade paths and narrower footpaths, it became evident that in fact it fulfilled most contemporary needs.

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The HLF will fund new work where it feels that it is needed but tends to discourage projects that include very large elements of new construction. Its priority is always to discover if it is possible to conserve something or give an old building a new use, before it will sanction entirely new construction.

Bennellick says, ‘I am keen to dispel the myth that we only do Victorian parks’. HLF and BIG introduced funding for cemeteries to the new parks programme launched in October 2012, a fascinating and demanding area in which to work. The other important field is the 20th Century park. Stevenage Town Centre gardens was the first New Town landscape to receive HLF funding, with the work led by HTA (opposite), and others have followed.

In 2010, for example, HLF and later BIG provided initial support for the restoration of Alexandra Road Park, part of the pioneering Grade II* listed housing development in Camden, north London.

Completed in 1978, the scheme includes a long, thin park providing much needed open space, but which was the subject of serious neglect. While in some ways this has been benign, with for instance trees growing to magnificent maturity, most of the impact was depressing.

Janet Jack, the landscape architect who

worked on the initial project with architect Neave Brown, said, ‘I was asked to design for low maintenance, but I hadn’t expected no maintenance.’ Over the years, cheap playground equipment (bought on a tight budget) deteriorated and was not replaced.

Broken railings protecting planting were left, allowing damage to planting beds, and vandalism crept in.

Without support of HLF’s Parks for People programme, the work that has been done to draw up plans for the future, led by the residents in partnership with Camden Council, could not have happened, and it looks as if the park will have a future which at one point seemed out of reach.

Part of this will involve a new maintenance regime, an area to which HLF gives a lot of attention. It has tried to be proscriptive, allocating money for maintenance as well as the initial work, and providing a stick where it is necessary. ‘The parks that work well,’ said Bennellick, ‘are those where friends’ groups, park managers and local politicians have very good relationships. When we are awarding grants, we look for a step change in how the park is managed.’

The HLF then is a responsible and generous donor. With BIG it has invested more than £640 million since 1996, and transformed more than 700 historic public spaces. With a total of around 27,000 parks in the UK, there is still plenty to do. Let’s hope people keep buying those lottery tickets.

1 — Play area at Town Centre Gardens.

Case study:

Stevenage Town Centre Gardens

By James Lord

Stevenage Town Centre Gardens are the first New Town and modernist park to be restored through funding provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund; an acknowledgement of the gardens’ contribution to post war design and planning. They represent an important period when philosophical, cultural and social aspirations were delivered through an integrated approach to town and landscape planning.

The project has faithfully restored the structure, character and heritage features within the gardens. New interventions have been created within under-used parts of the park (an unrealised part of the original masterplan) that combine with the restoration to give a renewed relevance for the future.

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At over 40 years’ old, the 3.85 hectare Town Centre Gardens in Stevenage had fallen into decline and were generally perceived as neglected and unsafe. While many people walked through the park on their way to the town centre, actual use was low.

The masterplan restores the park’s historic structure and its principal feature, the pond. It provides sensory gardens, an enlarged play area and new WC facilities to attract more people to the park and encourage them to stay for longer periods.

In 2006, Stevenage Borough Council appointed HTA to create a new vision for the Town Centre Gardens that revealed and restored its heritage whilst transforming it into a welcoming, exciting place for the twenty first century.

More than 100 trees were removed in the northern and eastern sections of the park to reinstate the open spaces and reveal the historic tree massing — groups of Norway maples combined with the farmland trees that predated /...

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News analysis cont.

2 — The restored lake promenade.

the park. Scrub and municipal amenity shrubs were cleared to reinstate views.

A new layer of memorial trees was planted to replace veteran trees as they reach the end of their life span.

The lake was dredged and its revetment replaced. HTA worked with the original artist, David Norris, to restore the Women and Doves sculpture which won the Royal British Society of Sculptors’ Otto Beit Medal for Excellence in Architecture when it was first installed in 1982.

A new centrepiece of the refurbished gardens is a pre-stressed granite bridge designed by HTA and engineered in Germany by Kusser Aicha Granitwerke, spanning almost 14m with a deck thickness of only 28cm and a weight of 22 tonnes. The bridge has no beam or piers and is the only one of its kind in the UK. HTA designed bespoke concrete planters for the new sensory gardens. At over 7m by 7m, each planter consists of two interlocking triangles with walls that twist from vertical to a 60 degree inclination.

HTA designed the patterned relief to the WC elevation and worked with the precast specialist to ensure the success and durability of the design. The graphic

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is a visual reference to the cast concrete relief on the nearby underpass, created by the well know contemporary artist, William Mitchell, in 1973.

The path network has been rationalised and furniture has been carefully selected and located to compliment the aesthetic of the park. More than 1500 roses have been planted in addition to new herbaceous planting to reintroduce colour and scent to the park.

TEAM • HTA Landscape Design: lead consultant, project manager, contract administrator and landscape designer; • Marylla Hunt: heritage; • Green Heart Partnership and Haring Woods Associates: community engagement; • PBA: engineer; • Davis Langdon: quantity surveyor; • The Landscape Group: constructor.

James Lord is director of landscape design at HTA

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Common touch

A project to enhance understanding and use of a special landscape in North Wales has been made particularly successful through the way that it has worked with farmers on the common land to involve them in improvement of the landscape in which they work.

By Ruth Slavid 1

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he Heather and Hillforts project deals with

a special area of North Wales, much of it

an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

which, although cherished locally and by the cognoscenti, does not rank terribly highly in public awareness.

1 — Guided walk on the Clwydian Range. 2 — The Llantysilio Mountains.

3 — Map showing the project areas.

Recently completed, it was a Heritage Lottery Funded Landscape Partnership Scheme which addressed some issues that were both particular to this project and have wider resonance. When partially complete, it won the Welsh round of the 2010 UK Landscape Award in recognition of the thorough work that had been done to manage the moorland and hill fort sites and, crucially, to communicate what was being done.

And there are many lessons, believes Nick Critchley, moorland field officer for the project, that could be applied elsewhere. ‘Generally we don’t think what we have here is that unusual,’ he says. ‘Every landscape is about people, communities and how they have used the landscape over time. What we have here which is more unique is the combination of Iron Age hill forts and the heathland habitat.’

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When it won the award in 2010, Rod Williams, chair of the Heather and Hillforts Partnership Board, said, ‘To me the most satisfying aspect of the Heather and Hillforts Project has been the way that people with differing interests have been able to work together to provide long term benefits for the heritage of the Clwydian Range and Llantysilio Mountains. It has been a joint effort.’

This joint effort has involved dealing with a range of issues. The project covers an area set within the Clwydian Range and Llantysilio Mountains of north-east Wales. In addition to it being in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, much of it forms part of a Landscape of Outstanding Historic Importance.

The heather moorland landscape includes six hillforts: Penycloddiau, Moel Arthur, Moel y Gaer (Llanbedr),Moel Fenlli, Moel y Gaer (Llantysilio) and Caer Drewyn. Denbighshire County Council Countryside Service and Clywdian Range AONB staff set up the project in response to the problems of maintaining the heather moorland and protecting the forts, some of which were suffering from erosion.

Heather moorland is special, beautiful and difficult to deal with because it is a semi-natural habitat, which has to be managed in the correct way if it is not to deteriorate.

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Although it is semi natural, heather moorland is of international importance, as around half of the /...

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Feature Common Touch

world’s total area is believed to be in the UK. Wales has lost about 40 per cent of its heather moorland since World War Two, mainly to forest plantations and agricultural improvement (ploughing and seeding with grass). Because of the lack of management, about two thirds of the remaining moorland is in poor condition.

The problem is that maintaining moorland requires two elements — sheep and fire. Sheep graze young trees, stopping them growing, and maintaining the character of the moorland. They enjoy the rough grasses, heather, bilberry and gorse found in the area, but not when they get too dense or old.

Much of this remaining moorland is common land, with a register of common rights holders and an allocation of the number of sheep they can put on the common. But with fewer people farming and fewer farm labourers there has been a double problem.

The reduction in workforce has made management by cutting and burning more difficult to do. As a result, the habitat had deteriorated, and become less attractive for keeping sheep on, and without the sheep performing their management role, the habitat deteriorated further.

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As part of this project, the team has taken a different approach to the one more commonly used for managing moorland. Critchley explained: ‘Over recent years moorland management has been seen as something undertaken by conservation organisations for the benefit of wildlife. Whilst the management work has been excellent, it has unfortunately alienated the graziers (farmers) a bit.

‘What we have been doing is to encourage farmers to keep farming the moorlands, and to carry out management. The benefit to them has been that it will provide better grazing for their sheep, which will mean they come off the mountain in better condition. The management will also sustain the moorland and improve the habitat for upland species.

By managing the vegetation, making the condition of the moorland better and improving the grazing, farming the uplands is made more economically viable.’

Critchley explained the management in more detail: ‘The best way to manage heather moorland is to burn it,’ he said. ‘Each site in our project area has a management plan. These cover 4,828 acres of land.

The sites have been divided up into areas of bracken where burning is inappropriate, gorse which is best 26

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4 — Graziers and a bracken bruiser on Moel Farnau.

5 — A ‘floating path’ under construction.

These provide access without damaging the archeology. .

6 — Bracken burning (done here with students) is a vital part of management.

7 — Bilberries are an important part of the character. 8 — The black grouse is making a comeback.

The land that is burnt is all open access and it is not closed for burning. Instead, with careful management and the use of enough people, the land remains open and this is used as an educational opportunity to explain to the public that burning, which can look brutal, is important for maintenance.

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managed by cutting, and heather and bilberry which is best managed by burning. We are working to a 15 year rotation plan, so each year we would aim to cut or burn one fifteenth of the heather and bilberry areas. This will mean that there is a structure to the age of the vegetation, that there is young vegetation for grazing and older, deeper vegetation for groundnesting birds. Too much young vegetation would be detrimental to the bird species, just as too much old vegetation would. Healthy moorland should have a variety of ages of vegetation.

‘Heather seed lies dormant in the soil for many years.

When heather is burnt the heat helps germinate the dormant seeds and the heather grows back. There are strict guidelines around heather burning; it can only be carried out between 1 October and 31 March and there are guidelines set out in the Heather and Grass burning code. We have provided farmers and graziers with some kit to help them burn, such as fire beaters and visors. We have also bought two fire foggers to help and to give us a chance of controlling any out of control or unseasonable burns. We offer help to anyone who wants to burn and have an excellent relationship with the local agricultural college (Llysfasi College) who are able to come and help out as well.’

Critchley defines the success by saying: ‘Over the last four years we have gone from about 25 acres of heather management in a year, 80 per cent of which was undertaken by the Countryside Service, to about 75 acres of management with about 70 per cent undertaken either entirely by farmers, or by farmers with Countryside Service assistance.’

The cutting of old gorse by farmers has also increased, and the organisation has put a great deal of effort into dealing with bracken, which is invasive.

There has been a combination of spraying by the project, and encouraging farmers to deal with the return of bracken by cutting or crushing. Again, the more sheep there are, the easier it will be to keep the bracken down.

Another success has been the return of the black grouse population, of which there are only about 350 males left in Wales, with 25 of them in the Clwydian Range, mainly on Moel Famau, and fewer than 10 on the Llantysilio mountains. Black grouse like the transition between woodland and heather moorland, displaying and feeding in the cut and burnt areas of heather, and nesting and sheltering in the deeper vegetation. Small cut areas were created which allow the grouse to feel safe because they are never far from deep heather if they need to get away from predators.

Critchley said, ‘We do suggest to farmers that they cut or burn larger areas than this, as these small patches take longer to do and are sometimes harder for sheep to find — we want farmers to be managing for the sake of agriculture rather than conservation.

If the agricultural management is right then the conservation aims will naturally follow.’

In terms of erosion, the most difficult issue facing the project team was the illegal use of off-road vehicles on the Llantysilio mountains. An additional problem was that this affected farming, as noisy bikes and 4 by 4s tended to ‘herd’ sheep around the mountains. Having worked with the police and other organisations successfully to reduce the level of illegal usage, the Heather and Hillforts team then restored 7.5 acres of heather moorland, which are making a good recovery. In addition there is one stretch of footpath that is suffering from erosion through /...

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9

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Feature Common Touch 9 — Sheep on Penycloddiau. 10 — Viewpoint at Moel Famau car park after restoration.

groups, and in addition there was a programme to raise understanding generally, ranging from audio heritage trails to volunteer days in which to learn about dry stone walling and moorland management.

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footfall, on Moel Famau, where it forms part of the Offa’s Dyke national trail. Work is being done to return the width of the path to its original size.

The hill forts themselves are also particularly vulnerable. One was suffering problems caused by motorbikes (which should not have been there) and two others from walkers (who should). The Heather and Hillforts team adopted an approach used on a fourth hill fort, installing ‘floating paths’. These consist of wood frames which have pitched stone paths and steps set inside them. Joiners have cut them to size in situ so that they follow the contours of the ramparts rather than needing to be fixed into the ground by posts. This means there is no interference with the archaeology.

While local people were found generally to be aware of the area and its heritage, the team identified nine specific groups that it felt were under-represented in their engagement of the landscape, and set out to remedy the situation. They ranged from disabled people to the young to those dependent on public transport, as well as the graziers and landowners who were brought on board by the heather-management programme. Specific projects were set up for these

Critchley says: ‘The biggest achievement hasn’t necessarily been work which is visible on the ground or measurable. It is the change in people’s attitude to moorland management. There are farmers and graziers who at the beginning of the project weren’t interested in doing heathland management but are now carrying out their own management and seeing the benefit in their stock. There are farmers who had never done moorland management; they could remember their grandfathers burning but hadn’t done anything themselves. These farmers are now doing the work themselves.’

With the project now complete, £45,000 has been allocated for future maintenance. The project has won a number of local awards in addition to the Welsh round of the UK Landscape Award. On their own, they may mean little, but they are an indication of a landscape that is now better understood, appreciated, maintained and, crucially, worked.

KEY DATES The key dates for the project are...

2000 Project planning begins, HLF contacted and consulted

2004 Project officer appointed to further 2004 – 05 2006 2007 2008 2010 2012 (Dec.)

develop proposals Project planning phase Development phase Approval received from HLF Project delivery starts 2 year extension granted and started Project finishes Landscape Spring 2013

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Blueprint for Brockhole

Planit-IE’s award-winning jetty at Brockhole on Lake Windermere was simply the first stage in the rethinking and repositioning of this important Lake District landscape to satisfy the requirements of 21st Century visitors.

By Derek Woolerton

T

Image ©: Planit-IE.

he Lake District National Park is the largest

of England’s National Parks and attracts in

the order of 15 million visitors a year

Although most climbers, walkers, sailors and cyclists are aware of the vast range of natural resources and the facilities that are available to them, a large number of other less knowledgeable visitors want to simply experience the landscape and enjoy the associated cultural and heritage assets of one of the most attractive corners of the UK.

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Unfortunately, memories of wet Lake District visits and the overcrowded ‘honey pot’ centres of Bowness and Ambleside often fail to excite adults and children, although a number of outstanding planned and designed facilities are available for the visitor which complement their setting and enhance the experience of the landscape character of the National Park. /...

1 — The new jetty at Brockhole on Lake Windermere.

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Feature Blueprint for Brockhole

These ‘hidden gems’ include Blackwell, Bailie Scott’s Arts and Crafts House restored by architect Allies and Morrison, the Jerwood Centre in Wordsworth’s Grasmere by Benson + Forsyth and Napper Architects and even the Love Shack, Sutherland Hussey’s 2011 RIBA award winning tree house, which are all exemplars of outstanding design. There are high hopes that Carmody Groarke’s competitionwinning Windermere Steam Boat Museum, not yet constructed, will also prove to be an exceptional visitor attraction.

Another recent addition is the jetty at Brockhole, a substantial steel, timber and stone structure which provides a new docking facility for large Lake Windermere passenger ferries and allows access directly to the Lake District Visitor Centre. The construction of the jetty, a Landscape Institute 2012 Award winner, is the first phase in the implementation of a masterplan for Brockhole which includes a comprehensive programme of radical improvements and innovations aimed at establishing a world-class visitor attraction.

The jetty is seen as a key part of a travel plan designed to attract more visitors to Brockhole by sustainable means. Its design, commissioned by the Lake District National Park in 2010, was conceived by a consortium of landscape architects, marine engineers and cost consultants and provides a good example of landscape-led multi-disciplinary team work.

It successfully addresses the technical challenges involved in designing a freeboard pontoon for passenger embarkation and disembarkation and a permanent fixed landside facility that provides a link between the visitor centre and the lake.

The brief called for the design to be practical, fully DDA compliant and environmentally sensitive. The landside facilities, designed by Planit-IE which acted as landscape architect and lead consultant, consist of a ticketing facility (the drum), a canopy which offers protection for waiting passengers, seating, paths, timber decking and traditional stone walling and steel gates and enclosures. Mature trees grow through the ramped decking within removable steel inserts and this gives an immediate feeling that the jetty is part of a mature woodland setting and that it has been present in the landscape for much longer than is the case.

The form of the drum and the canopy are organic in both plan and elevation. Materials have been skilfully selected and include a combination of green 32

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oak timber cladding and decking and curved glass to create a structure that relates very successfully to the wooded lakeside setting, the local topography and the circuitous paths which lead up to the visitor centre.

The use of liquid copper (a waterproof membrane containing copper flakes which acquires a patina like the solid metal) to create the roof of the canopy and the roof and supports of the drum is innovative in this location, enhanced by the patina that has developed rapidly and which assists in assimilating the structures into the woodland location.

Simple and thoughtful detailing and careful workmanship are also apparent in the construction of canopy supports, steel fencing, seat supports, hand rails and gates where there is evidence of a practical and elegant ‘Arts and Crafts’ approach to a suite of fittings. This is most appropriate for a location within Brockhole’s Thomas Mawson designed registered garden.

The success of this design lies in its achievement of almost impossible objectives. The jetty is not only well integrated into a sensitive lakeside location, but also provides an exciting point of arrival and departure that makes a bold and powerful design statement. Above all, it is a delight in the landscape and makes a small but significant contribution to the built fabric of the Lake District.

The Brockhole masterplan The Lake District Visitor Centre at Brockhole, the first to be established in a National Park, has for many years provided a range of traditional facilities aimed at informing and educating visitors about the natural resources, cultural associations and heritage assets of the National Park.

2 — Sensitive detailing and workmanship provide an Arts and Crafts feel. 3 — Existing state of the house and Thomas Mawson gardens.

4 — Visualisation of the gardens from the masterplan.

However, notwithstanding recent innovations at Brockhole, including the new jetty and the introduction of a popular Treetop Trek aerial adventure facility, decreasing financial resources and a consequential reduction in staffing levels have resulted in the Centre becoming ‘tired’ and lacking visitor appeal. The National Park Authority has recognised that a comprehensive programme of revitalisation is needed has set out a number of

aims and objectives for Brockhole to become ‘an orientation centre which provides an all-weather destination and a taster venue that encourages exploration of the Lake District’ and which ‘acts as an exemplar of sustainability’.

In Spring 2012 the National Park Authority commissioned the preparation of a masterplan for Brockhole following an open invitation to tender which attracted some 80 consultants at the PQQ stage, invited submissions from 11 and an interview process for a shortlist of six. Planit-IE was selected and appointed in March 2012 and since then has led a multidisciplinary team in advising the authority on how to achieve its aims and objectives.

The National Park Authority described a long ‘shopping list’ desirable active and passive uses including water sports and adventure play, a new visitor centre, ‘events areas’ and places for education, gentle strolling and quiet contemplation. Associated infrastructure was required to respond to the needs of vehicular and pedestrian access, circulation and servicing, all with an emphasis on sustainability and all to be sensitive to Brockhole’s setting as an English Heritage listed historic Mawson garden. With little guidance provided on capital budgets for new facilities or for on-going management, the brief was clearly challenging!

Planit-IE rose to the challenge, developing its response to the brief by means of a route familiar to most landscape professionals.

Images ©: Planit-IE.

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An understanding of the ‘bigger picture’ flows from /... historic site and gardens as useful descriptions of the

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Feature Blueprint for Brockhole

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originally designed by Thomas Mawson in 1899/1900 as a setting for Brockhole house, the Mawson garden as it is today and the positive and negative attributes of the current visitor centre site. The analysis of a series of ‘layers’ including planting character, ecology, circulation, the visitor experience and buildings, and their inter-relationship allows Planit-IE to ‘explain where clashes and harmonies, opportunities and constraints exist across the estate’. The process resulted in the identification of ‘key challenges’ which are then used as a basis for establishing ‘guiding principles’ which cover the topics of ‘balance, robustness, brand and image, carbon and phasing’ The Planit-IE masterplan for Brockhole is grounded in the disciplines of site planning that are well understood by the landscape profession. It is described under three over-arching headings — ‘Grab (catch people at the front door), Grasp (unveil the joys of Brockhole and Gasp (don’t let them leave the Lake District)’ which are useful ‘hooks’ to aid the enormous task of marketing the site and attracting necessary inward investment.

Overall the masterplan layout is well worked, clearly resolved and has a structure that is convincing.

Activity areas flow seamlessly into one another

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Images ©: Planit-IE.

with sweeping path alignments linking facilities and points of interest which will assist in dispersing visitors throughout the site. Particularly interesting components of the masterplan design include the site frontage (‘Approach’), which is currently low-key in character and fails to generate a sense of anticipation or excitement for the visitor. Ideas include resurfacing the carriageway to slow the pace of traffic and the creation of an entrance that is ‘of the Lakes and not highways driven’ all directed at ‘establishing Brockhole’s onstreet image’. Plans for the main access to the visitor centre site to be provided through the historic Mawson gateway at Brockhole will provide a glimpse of the original Mawson concept, while proposed woodland parking will also improve significantly the arrivals area and allow visitors to relate to the facilities on offer.

The suggested addition of new contemporary gardens, if handled carefully, could also usefully augment the inherent attraction of the historic garden site.

5 — Section through the proposed watersports taster lake.

6 — The new waterside facility acts as a link between the lake and the visitor centre.

The provision of an iconic multi-functional and multi-level visitor centre at Brockhole is an essential part of the whole, a facility that will be required to house a leading-edge visitor centre, café, exhibitions space, wet weather shelter and play area together with site management offices. The Planit-IE concept is bold (and would almost certainly rely on a commercial

operator) but could be the most important catalyst to Brockhole becoming a truly world-class visitor facility. However the potential impact of a substantial visitor centre at Brockhole together with proposed new facilities and retained facilities (Tree Top Trek) cannot be overlooked. The development will need to be very carefully designed, delivered and managed if it is to be compatible with Brockhole’s sensitive lakeside location within a relatively small registered historic garden and parkland estate in the Lake District National Park.

The Planit-IE masterplan has clearly provided a sound basis to accommodate change Its implementation and the success of the new Brockhole visitor facility will largely depend on the availability of adequate finance and, crucially, on a high standard of enlightened landscape management over its lifetime. It is perhaps inevitable therefore that the Masterplan has been designed to have ‘a long life and a loose fit’, which needs to ‘respond and adapt to opportunities and challenges’ and is a ‘working tool’ and a ‘blueprint for Brockhole’s development and progression over the next 15 years into a world-class visitor facility...’

Derek Woolerton is a director of Woolerton Dodwell Associates.

He has curated with Susan Dawson the exhibition Thomas Mawson: Landscape and Architecture in the Lake District.

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Urban parks A history: 1839–2012

The following pages present the story of public parks, not as a history lesson, but in an easily grasped illustrated format, intended both to stimulate and delight.

D

Images ©: David Atkinson, handmademaps.com

r Ian Thompson, reader in

landscape architecture at

the University of Newcastle,

who has researched the piece, is amply qualified to do so. He has moved from being a practising landscape architect to an academic role, writing widely, and with a particular interest in landscape architecture theory and the history of the designed landscape.

Thompson has selected 15 parks for this exercise, starting with the Arboretum in Derby, constructed in 1839– 40, and finishing with the Olympic Park in London which, despite its huge success, is still very much a work in progress. These two may be close together geographically, but between them, Thompson’s story leads us to the USA, France, China and Singapore.

In researching this piece, Thompson identified a number of threads of thinking, including the long-standing embrace of the pastoral/ picturesque and its subsequent rejection, the development of post-industrial parks, the burgeoning eco-movement and the growth of the linear park. As in any work of this kind, projects have been omitted which others

will feel should have been included. Part of the pleasure in an exercise like this lies in stimulating debate.

Thompson explains his thinking as follows: ‘Studying the history and theory of landscape architecture (including the history of theory) one quickly comes to two conclusions. First, today’s designers often hold beliefs and attitudes with deep historical roots; second, a lot of new thinking turns out, upon inspection, to be a recycling or representation of ideas that have been around for centuries.

These might seem like very conservative conclusions, but they need not be. The freshness comes in the recycling, because the ideas are always changed in the process — inflected, extended, reinterpreted — and this is how progress is made. New ideas and movements can also be conscious rejections of earlier paradigms, and we may even talk of dialectical processes of thought. Rejecting the picturesque, as did the Modernists and — more recently — the Landscape Urbanists, may be a step along the path to a new aesthetics based on a reconsideration of the urban-rural distinction and the collapse of the old division between nature and culture.

‘We can trace these shifts in the history of park design, which is a microcosm of landscape architecture in general.

Indeed landscape architecture has its own foundational narrative based upon Frederick Law Olmsted’s visit to Birkenhead Park and his adoption of the title “landscape architect” when submitting the winning entry for the competition to design Central Park in New York City with his partner Calvert Vaux. Park design has had a central place in the discipline ever since and new thinking is often revealed in plans for bold new parks, such Gas Works Park in Seattle, Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord or the High Line. Looking at the history of park design can tell us much about the traditions and trajectory of our profession.’

His research has been translated into delightful visual form by illustrator and map-maker David Atkinson and, as well as appearing on the printed page, there is a poster that you can pull out and enjoy on your wall.

If you would like to order further copies of the poster (which will be free of the unavoidable creases) then please email info@darkhorsedesign.co.uk.

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Feature Urban parks

The Arboretum Derby, England 1839

Victoria Park London, England 1840

Birkenhead Park Wirral, England 1847

Central Park New York City, USA 1859

The claim that this was England’s first public park is contested because on some days there was a charge for entry, but it certainly kick-started the movement for public parks in Britain. A labelled collection of plants meant that the park, a gift from industrialist and former mayor Joseph Strutt, was educational as well as recreational.

This was the first London park specifically commissioned as such, and provided a major boost to the public park movement. It was created following a petition from 30,000 local residents to Queen Victoria, and became known as the ‘People’s Park’ because of the numerous political meetings that took place there.

Designed in the picturesque style, with parkland, woodland, lakes and sports facilities, Birkenhead had a great influence on Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park, who visited on his second trip to England in 1850. As was normal at the time, plots around the edge were sold for upmarket housing, helping to finance the park.

America’s first purpose-built park was an interpretation of the British public park, set within the rectilinear grid of Manhattan. The rural scenery was intended to provide an antidote to the oppressive conditions of the city. Vaux and Olmsted referred to themselves as ‘landscape architects’ in their submission — the first use of the term.

Parc de la Villette Paris, France 1987

Parc de la Villette 2nd stage runner up 1987

Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, Germany 2001

Zhongshan Shipyard Park Guandong, China 2002

This controversial design was developed in collaboration with deconstructivist philosopher Jacques Derrida, and reacted against the conventional idea of a park.

Bernard Tschumi (an architect not a landscape architect) described the park, on the site of a former cattle market, as ‘the longest discontinuous building in the world’.

This was considered even more radical than the winning proposal, with its 43 parallel strips covering the entire site, allowing visitors to traverse it in an infinite number of ways.

The strips could change with time. The design has been immensely influential, cited

by Landscape Urbanists even more often than Tschumi’s built scheme.

Set on the site of a former steelworks, Landschaftspark celebrated the social, cultural and heritage values of the existing structures, making them safe and keeping and reusing them wherever possible. Following on from Gas Works Park, this made the idea of retaining industrial and transport infrastructure mainstream, paving the way for projects like the High Line.

Designer Konglian Wu explained his ideas for keeping industrial heritage by showing images of Gas Works Park and Duisburg-Nord. The park, which was revolutionary for China, has led to similar schemes in the country.

An ecological island and a flood-control channel help cope with fluctuating water levels. There is a Red Box for contemplating the Cultural Revolution, and green rooms for courting couples.

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Landscape Spring 2013

Parc des Buttes-Chaumont Paris, France 1867

The Emerald Necklace Boston, USA 1895

Bos Park Amsterdam, Netherlands 1934

Gas Works Park Seattle, USA 1975

An impressive, early example of the recycling of industrial land, this dramatically conceived late-Romantic fusion of sublime and picturesque elements is on the reclaimed site of a former gypsum works.

It belies its early history as a refuse dump and the site of a gallows, and was an innovator in the use of concrete and other new materials.

This chain of parks linked by parkways and waterways introduced the idea of the linear park or series of parks. It had an important environmental impact, both by linking habitats with wildlife corridors, and through remediation. Works to tackle sewage and drainage problems in Back Bay Fens improved public health.

The largest urban park created in the 20th Century, this ‘green wedge’ intended to provide recreational facilities for 6 million people, is set in an area of polders below sea level. It is functional in design, breaking with the picturesque tradition.

Built during the depression of the 1930s, it was a giant jobcreation scheme.

Parts of the Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant were preserved for their historic and aesthetic importance. The park set a precedent for preservation of industrial structure, as well as pioneering bio-phy to-remediation techniques to ‘clean and green’ the water and ground. There is still some tar seepage, but it is easily removed.

High Line New York City, USA 2009

Gardens by the Bay Bay South, Singapore 2012

Olympic Park London, England 2012

This re-use of an existing freight line on Manhattan’s West Side captured imaginations internationally, partly thanks to its position.

Some rail tracks and ties have been maintained, and the planting is inspired by the selfseeded vegetation that existed previously. The linear park exists thanks to the energy of Friends of the High Line, who fought demolition and found funding.

This combination of nature and technology, combining tropical planting with cooled biomes and giant ‘supertrees’ that host vertical gardens and incorporate services, has been designed to be spectacular by day and night. It is in the city centre, on remade land, adjacent to a bay that is being altered from saline to fresh water. It is one of a kind.

This has even exceeded the High Line in the attention it has attracted, playing a starring role in the Olympics with its vivid floral displays.

A triumph of regeneration, and serious about biodiversity, it is intended to stimulate the regeneration of a section of London in legacy mode. The park reopens partially this summer, and fully next year.

Landscape Spring 2013

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Landscape Spring 2013

Technical 1

By Fiona McWilliam

Tree disease The appearance of ash dieback in this country last autumn prompted panic and recriminations. We look at the facts, at the alternatives available and at the other threats to the UK’s trees.

East Anglia, at sites including established woodland. The affected trees did not appear to have been in contact with imported stock, raising concerns that wild trees can be affected by wind-blown spores from mainland Europe.

The government eventually passed emergency legislation restricting imports of ash plants, seeds and trees at the end of October.

‘I

Photo ©: WTPL/ Ken Leslie.

f you go down to the woods today,

you are in for a nasty surprise.’

So remarked TV presenter, and

(honorary) president of The Woodland Trust Clive Anderson, in a Guardian article last autumn. He was referring, of course, to the continuing spread of ash dieback, the disease caused by the Chalara fraxinea fungus.

Yet ash dieback is only one of many diseases and pests threatening the UK’s tree population. And while ash dieback’s full impact on the rural landscape will not be known until new tree growth emerges in the spring, the removal of ash from the landscape architect’s palette of trees looks set to have a major visual impact in the long term on our urban and suburban landscapes, and on vast areas of British parkland.

The Chalara fraxinea fungus has caused widespread damage to ash tree populations in continental Europe since it was first reported as an unknown

1 — The openness of an ash canopy is special.

1

new disease in Poland in 1992. It is especially destructive in common ash (Fraxinus excelsior), including its ‘Pendula’ ornamental variety. Narrow-leaved ash (Fraxinus angustifolia) is also susceptible.

The disease is particularly damaging for young ash plants, killing them within one growing season of symptoms becoming visible. Older trees can survive initial attacks, but tend to succumb eventually after several seasons of infection.

In February 2012, the fungus was found in a consignment of infected ash plants sent from the Netherlands to a nursery in Buckinghamshire. In October, scientists confirmed a small number of cases in

The Forestry Commission strongly advises tree and plant buyers ‘to be very careful to specify healthy stock from reputable suppliers, to practise good plant hygiene and bio-security... to prevent accidental spread of plant diseases, and to report any plant diseases’. Buyers and specifiers should also be aware that seed gathered from British trees is sometimes sent to nurseries in continental Europe to be cultivated before being re-imported as seedlings.

While this practice may make business sense in the short term, it certainly does not make biological sense, warns Dr Mark Spencer, senior curator, British and Irish herbarium, at the Natural History Museum’s Life Sciences Department.

Nor, he adds, is it likely to make any sort of longer-term cost sense, when one considers the overall performance of non-native genetic stock of native plants which may have inherently reduced fitness /...

Landscape Spring 2013

43

Technical 1 cont.

Britain has been importing plant material and timber since the seventh century and in all probability will continue to do so

for the British landscape and climate compared to locally-sourced genetic stock of native plants.

We should, he argues, use native trees wherever possible. This is a view shared

by John Tucker, director of woodland creation at the Woodland Trust, although he admits this is not always practicable for urban planting.

Britain, has, however, been importing plant material and timber since the seventh century and in all probability will continue so to do. ‘There are so many million fungi in the world, and they are on every bean we import from Kenya, every cut flower we bring in from the Netherlands, every Christmas tree we order from Denmark or wherever,’ says Alan Simson, reader in urban forestry and landscape architecture at Leeds Metropolitan University, and a member of the Landscape Institute’s biosecurity sub-committee.

What turns a benign fungus into a rampant problem is unknown, he says. ‘It may be, in fact probably is, partially to do with climate change, but there may well be other things at work of which we know little.’ The usual palette of tree species used by landscape architects is woefully small, Simson says, and ‘we cannot really get away with planting native trees in the “serious urbs”, as most are not genetically programmed to survive in such environments’.

44

Landscape Spring 2013

Yet the unforeseen consequences of the global trade in plants are undoubtedly driving significant problems beyond that of ash dieback. Mark Spencer describes the unintended devastation of New Zealand’s insect population as a result of the successful spread of the fly agaric fungus, which arrived in the country with pine trees imported from Europe and North America.

While vital to the health of many conifers and pines in the Northern Hemisphere, the imported fungus is pushing out the local fungal communities on which many insects depend.

sandy soils so there are many species to choose from.’

Thankfully a tightening of bio-security measures is likely in the UK, says Dr Jon Heuch, an independent arboricultural consultant and a member of the Forestry Commission’s Biosecurity Programme Board. A new British Standard is now being developed, he adds, and ‘we may see a need for much better chain of custody information and even third party certification if purchasers demand it’.

An EU directive on invasive alien plants is also in the pipeline.

Common ash trees, which make up an estimated 30% of our wooded landscape, are large, and long-lived, and provide light open canopies allowing light through to the woodland floor. This creates a good habitat for important species such as bluebells and ramsons. No one tree species would replicate the ash’s light open canopy, says Hill, ‘but a managed oak woodland with variations in tree density would provide a similar habitat for bluebells’.

In terms of what trees we should plant instead of ash, says Emma Hill, a policy consultant with charity Trees for Cities, this depends very much on location. ‘If we are talking about rural locations, woodlands or natural areas, we would substitute with other native species,’ she says. ‘Ash trees are tolerant of most soils except light,

There is a wide range of alternatives species for sites with brown-earth soils, says Hill, ‘including aspen, beech, birch, field maple, hornbeam, oak, lime, rowan, sweet chestnut and sycamore.’ The species range is more restricted for calcareous soils, she adds, particularly for shallow soils. It includes beech, birch, field maple, hawthorn, holly, lime, rowan, whitebeam and yew. Alder, aspen, willows and oaks are possible alternatives on moist to wet soils.

Trees for Cities would not plant common ash in urban settings, says Hill, because of its ‘leaderless, rangy habit’.

‘In street locations we might plant common ash cultivars such F. excelsior Westhofs Glorie or F. excelsior Altena, which keep a much more regular form well into maturity,’ he says. ‘We might also plant

Photo ©: Margaret Barton

manna ash such as F. ornus Louisa Lady or F. ornus Obelisk, but it is not yet known whether ash dieback affects this species,’

Birch (Betula) species have a similar light, open habit but are much shorter lived and do not, according to Hill, “have the same presence as ash”. London plane (Platanus x hispanica) also has a more open habit but can become very large.

We must keep striving to find a solution to Chalara dieback, she says. ‘Experience from Denmark [where 90% of trees are thought to have been infected] has shown that maybe 10% of the ash trees are immune to the fungus. If that is the case here then resistant strains can survive. We need to find these trees and cultivate them.’

Tree specifiers need to also be aware of the many other pests and diseases, threatening our trees. As the Forestry Commission warns, ‘Britain’s trees are facing unprecedented threats, while climate change will create the conditions for even more pest and disease activity’.

2

Among those already present in Britain are: acute oak decline, a condition affecting oak trees in parts of parts of England and Wales, in which bacteria, ‘are believed to be involved’; the Asian longhorn beetle, a wood-boring insect that can cause extensive damage to a range of broadleaved trees; bleeding canker of horse chestnut trees; chestnut blight, a highly damaging disease confirmed in sweet chestnut trees in Warwickshire and East Sussex in 2011; horse chestnut leaf miner moth, which was first found in Britain in 2002 in London, but has since spread to much of England and Wales; oak pinhole borer, which took hold in southern Britain after the 1987 gales, when it took advantage of the glut of suitable breeding material; and oak processionary moth, which severely defoliates oak trees and can make them susceptible to other pests and diseases. Even the smog-resistant London plane is now suffering from a new disease, Massaria, which weakens branches so much that they spontaneously drop to the ground.

Fiona McWilliam is a former editor of Geographical magazine.

Photo ©: WTPL/ Mike Ryder

These trees would usually be medium to large in size with an oval or pyramidal form. Trees with a similar form and size include small-leafed limes (Tilia cordata) and cultivars, Turkish hazel (Corylus colurna) and hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) and cultivars. However, the habit of these trees is much denser than that of the ash.

3

2 — Birch trees are shorter-lived than ash. 3 — Symptoms of ash dieback.

Landscape Spring 2013

45

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Landscape Spring 2013

Technical 2

By Fiona McWilliam

Tree selection

1 — Street tree planted under a Trees for Cities initiative.

If trees are to do well in our cities and countryside they need to be selected appropriately and nurtured.

It is also important to understandthe effect that they will have on their environment and how they will respond to climate change.

N

obody could sensibly object to the claim that trees make places work, look and feel better.

Photo ©: Tress for Cities.

What’s more, according to the Trees & Design Action Group (TDAG) — the independent organisation established in 2007 to facilitate projects ‘promoting the role of the urban forest throughout the UK’ — trees can also help to create conditions for economic success.

Yet Dr Mark Spencer, senior curator of the British and Irish herbarium at the Natural History Museum’s Life Sciences Department, believes there is currently too much ‘fitting in by colour’ when it comes to landscape design in this country, and not enough consideration of the suitability of species and long-term maintenance costs, which should inform which trees are planted and where.

1

A huge amount of public money is wasted on planting inappropriate trees, he says, and this is often just because they’re too big and/or fast-growing. ‘There’s a huge amount of learning needed for the managing of public space’. The lack of skill and knowledge within some local authorities is extraordinary, he says, and managing parks and parkland is both undervalued and under-skilled, ‘with the

core skills of planting and maintenance often lacking’.

According to Emma Hill, a policy consultant with urban tree-planting charity Trees for Cities, up to 25 per cent of newly planted amenity trees fail to establish. ‘The first three to five years are crucial for a tree in terms of watering while they are establishing their root /...

Landscape Spring 2013

47

Technical 2 cont.

Landscape architects need to examine what else trees are providing, in terms of heat and carbon mitigation and in catching pollutants such as dust, or reducing noise.

system, and keeping an eye on stakes, ties and guards,’ she says, ‘including making sure these are removed as soon as they are no longer necessary.’

a good look at the resources a planting scheme will have access to in the long term, for maintenance, and to realise once and for all that what he calls ‘the colouring-by-number approach’ wastes huge amounts of money. And while appearance is obviously important in urban and suburban settings, he adds, landscape architects need also to examine and understand what else trees are providing, in terms of heat and carbon mitigation, for example, and in catching pollutants such as dust, or reducing noise.

Trees for Cities has a dedicated watering team which spends the first three growing seasons watering trees and checking on their condition. ‘We also put a lot of our resources into engaging the community with the trees in order that they feel a sense of ownership and become our eyes and ears,’ Hill says. ‘If we can reach a tree in trouble quickly we have more of a chance of saving it.’

Where and how a tree is planted are both crucial to its long-term success.

Unsurprisingly, Trees for Cities spends a lot of time surveying a potential site prior to choosing which species it plants and where.

Surveying takes account of a site’s spatial constraints, namely its underground utilities, cellars, foundations; overhead fixtures such as electricity and telecommunication cables, CCTV and balconies; and adjacent fixtures, such as site furniture, highways, footways and existing vegetation.

How people and traffic move around a proposed planting site is also an important consideration, as are physical attributes, such as soil pH and structure, aspect, light 48

Landscape Spring 2013

2

and shade, drainage, and water availability.

There is no standardised consistent approach to planting and after care, says Hill, which is why the British Standards Institution has proposed a new British Standard — BS8545 Code of Practice for trees from nursery to landscape — which will encompass tree production, despatch, storage, transplanting and maintenance until a tree is independent in the landscape. The standard will, Hill says, ‘recognise all these currently disjointed elements as a continuous process’.

Mark Spencer urges specifiers of trees, including landscape architects, to take

Selecting trees for reducing noise requires the planting of very dense evergreens such as the Leyland cypress. Yet even trees that are thickly vegetated to the ground, and at least 8–10 metres thick, only reduce noise by about 25 per cent. Artificial barriers are, it seems, far more effective.

There is a general assumption that all trees species have a positive impact on air quality, but this is far from straightforward. Lancaster University’s Trees & Sustainable Urban Air Quality report notes that while trees can remove pollutants, particularly nitrogen dioxide and particles from the air, they can also emit VOCs which, in combination with man-made oxides of nitrogen, can contribute to the production of other pollutants, especially ozone and particles that can damage human health.

3

2 — Young trees, such as this one on the Pelican Estate in southeast London, need protection. 3 — Flowering trees planted on the Studley Estate in south London.

4 — Trees on Zuidplein in Amsterdam. 5 — Barney, at Barn Elms, southwest London, is possibly the oldest London plane in the UK.

It claims that trees that do not emit the most reactive VOCs, but do have a large leaf surface area, have the best effect on air quality. Trees suited to urban environments which remove the most pollutants without contributing to the formation of new ones include Norway maple, field maple, ash and silver birch.

Photo ©: 2 & 3 — Trees for Cities. 4 — Alan Simson. 5 —WTPL/ Edward Parker.

4

Oaks, poplars and willows can have detrimental effects on air quality downwind, the report states, so care needs to be taken when planting these species in very large numbers. It concludes though that overall, the effects on air quality of very large-scale planting of almost all tree species in cities would be positive.

The Lancaster report also ranks different tree species by their ability to store carbon.

The researchers did not include carbon sequestration in its tree scores for air quality, ‘given the relatively small amount of carbon stored in trees’. (For example, the total amount of carbon stored in the West Midland tree population is said to be equivalent to only 6 per cent of the carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere in the region in a single year). Nevertheless, larch, silver birth and poplar score well here, while English oak, field maple, hazel and holly are less impressive.

5

Specifiers should not ignore changing climatic conditions. According to the Forestry Commission, tree choice should /...

Landscape Spring 2013

49

Technical 2 cont.

be guided by management objectives and site conditions, and its (and the Environment Agency’s) new decision tool Ecological Site Classification ESC3 helps specifiers to review options likely to be sustainable in the future climate.

It uses meteorological and soils data to help specifiers choose from 57 tree species; they can then test their selection against climate change scenarios for 2050 and 2080.

The Right Trees for a Changing Climate tree selector tool hosted on the Greater London Authority’s website has a database of 300 species and cultivars suitable for a variety of urban conditions. The underlying database was prepared by Forest Research in collaboration with the Greater London Authority, the Forestry Commission, Natural England, the Tree Council and the Royal Horticultural Society. The database lists the characteristics of tree species that will be suitable for the predicted climatic conditions that London and other urban areas will experience for the rest of this century.

Hand-in-hand with changing climate are the emerging disease and pest issues described on pages 39–41. Yet landscape architects can and should play an important role in minimising potential problems in the future.

Alan Simson, reader in urban forestry and landscape architecture at Leeds 50

Landscape Spring 2013

Metropolitan University, and a member of the Landscape Institute’s bio-security sub-committee, is eager to encourage specifiers to adopt the Santamour rules for urban planting, set out by the late Frank S Santamour Jr, in his 2002 paper Trees for Urban Planting: Diversity, Uniformity and Common Sense.

For congested space, Heuch suggests that planting fastigiate specimens (with erect, almost parallel branches tapering towards the top) may be useful, ranging from hornbeam (common) to oak (less common) and ‘providing columnar structures with less chance of a spreading monster’.

The Santamour rules dictate that one should plant no more than 10 per cent of any species, no more than 20 per cent of any genus and no more than 30 per cent of any family at any one site. Santamour, who worked at the US National Arboretum, argued that a broader diversity of trees is needed in our urban landscapes ‘to guard against the possibility of large-scale devastation by both native and introduced insect and disease pests’. Fungi usually attack families, Simson adds, ‘so we need to spread the load’.

We need to think strategically too, he adds, and recognise that long-lived trees may not be the right way to enhance green infrastructure. ‘We might need to accept that our trees won’t last as long as in nature,’ he says, ‘and shorter life spans are likely. This is the reality, but people don’t want to accept it.’

Independent arboricultural consultant and TDAG member Jon Heuch advises specifiers to consider both resilience and diversity: ‘A diverse range of trees and shrubs is more likely to be able to cope with specific pests and if different sizes they would likely provide a more varied habitat for wildlife,’ he says. ‘It’s not good news for uniform planting stock for avenues and other linear features as there is a higher risk that a single pathogen could affect all of them.’

— Right trees for a Changing Climate database Ash dieback advice; www.forestry.gov.uk/ forestry/INFD-8UDM6S

Further information — TDAG Trees in Townscape, A Guide for Decision Makers; www.tdag.org.uk — Ecological Site Classification (ESC) 3 tool; http://bit.ly/XFIKRn

— Possible solution to fungal disease — Noise barriers; http://bit.ly/U6hAgb — Urban Air Quality; http://bit.ly/e7OKGS

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51

Practice 1

By Ruth Slavid

Engaging approach There are alternatives to bowing to a process that too often ignores the needs of local communities, as Johanna Gibbons of J & L Gibbons has discovered.

If this sounds rather idealistic — and Gibbons admits that it is not to every developer’s taste — then what is really admirable about her practice is that it has managed to make a living out of this approach — and be recognised for it as well. J & L Gibbons, which is over 25 years old, currently employs five people and is based in the north London house that Gibbons shares with partner Neil Davidson. The lavatory walls are lined with award certificates, with pride of place given to the 2011 President’s Award from the Landscape Institute. This was given for Making Space in Dalston, a project that would never have happened if Gibbons had stuck to conventional routes.

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Landscape Spring 2013

1

Her practice, J & L Gibbons, had been appointed in Dalston, a fast changing area of north-east London. to design the landscape at Dalston Square, a housing development benefitting from the new Dalston railway station. It rapidly became clear that the local community was not happy, and that it felt its needs were being ignored. Gibbons encountered Liza Fior of architectural practice MUF , which was working on a different project, at angry planning meetings. It soon became clear that the two agreed that a different approach was needed, and on what that approach should be.

They came up with an idea for a series of small-scale projects, addressing the needs and aspirations of local people. ‘We talked to about 200 people in small groups,

Not only have these projects proved hugely popular, but the original proposals for Dalston Square also went through without a murmur. ‘If you have a groundswell of public support, nobody can resist it,’ Gibbons said.

The process of engagement cannot be rushed, however, which is why Gibbons is delighted that the practice has recently been appointed, alongside architect ShedKM, for a £100 million development near the centre of Brighton. This will see the redevelopment of a market and woodshed in a mixed-use scheme, including a number of arts uses, for developer Cathedral.

Gibbons says that the practice stressed the community engagement aspect of the project very strongly, and that ‘we have just had the most wonderful brief from the creative director saying that the site is ours for 14 months.’

The engagement will not just consist of sitting in rooms and talking. Instead, the

Photo ©: 1 & 4 — Sarah Blee. 2 & 3 — Sarah Blee/J & L Gibbons.

C

onsultation may be a buzzword

of today, but it is not one that

Johanna Gibbons likes. ‘We

don’t do consultation,’ she tells me. ‘We do engagement.’ To Gibbons, consultation is ‘often a top down process.

It can also turn into PR rather than an end point where people will offer some sweat equity. People need to see that what they have bothered to say has been addressed.’

developing a closer-grained idea,’ Gibbons explained. They received some money from Design for London to carry out a mapping project, identified that there was a need to do something, and wrote a brief. This went out for tender and fortunately the two practices won it. Asked to produce a list of 10 public realm projects, they came up with 76, of which the top ten then went ahead at a total cost of one million pounds.

1 — Johanna Gibbons. 2 — Angel Building, Islington (architect AHMM). 3 — Bourne Hill, Salisbury (architect Stanton Williams). 4 — The barn at Eastern Curve, Dalston. 5 — The ‘toy box’ where play equipment is put away, Gillett Square, Dalston. 6 — Concept image of the Eastern Curve, Dalston.

3

Photo ©: 5 — Sarah Blee/J & L Gibbons, muf architecture/art 6 — J& L Gibbons, muf architecture/art.

intention is to build a garden on part of the site and to use the process of creating and using it as part of the engagement process.

Unlike other projects on which the practice has worked, neither Brighton nor Dalston have obvious aspects of great historic worth, but nevertheless, Gibbons believes, it is important to work with what is present and to understand its significance.

‘Part of our thinking is to value what is there,’ Gibbons says, ‘not just listed structures but local features of significance to a local community.’

This way of working is certainly not the easiest. There is the frustration when the competitive process means that the practice works on the early stages of a project, only to see it pass to a competitor.

While no practice likes this to happen, in Gibbons’ case it means that the process of engagement comes to an abrupt end, with members of a community who have invested time and effort possibly left feeling abandoned. On the other hand, successful projects never really end. By working with small groups, Gibbons gets to know them well, and people are likely to stay in touch which is both pleasing and tiring.

The route the practice has chosen is demanding but it shows that landscape architects do not have to bend to the will of a system and work in a way that they find unsatisfactory.

2

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Landscape Spring 2013

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BUSINESS

Practice 2

By Ruth Slavid

BIM for landscape The Landscape Institute is progressing fast on producing information that will allow landscape architects to participate in the BIM revolution. It advises practitioners to be alert, to learn and listen — and not to be bullied into buying unsuitable software.

W

hen the Landscape

Institute set out to raise

awareness across the

profession about BIM (Building Information Modelling), it quickly discovered a pleasing level of knowledge, or at least awareness, of the issues. ‘At our first BIM event in September,’ explained chief executive Alastair McCapra, ‘we thought we would be doing a roundtable answering the question “What is BIM?”. But we soon found that the level of awareness was well beyond that.’

Instead, landscape architects were asking more informed questions, in particular asking how they should respond to contractors who said to them that if they wanted to be BIM-ready they should

buy specific software packages — most frequently Autodesk’s Revit. It was this that led McCapra to respond with the injunction ‘Be prepared but buy nothing’.

The institute has also issued a guidance note (http://bit.ly/VdFnuu ) for practices, both outlining some of the terms that constitute BIM, and reiterating the advice not to be rushed into unsuitable purchases.

The reasons for this are twofold.

Traditional CAD software has not served landscape architects well, and buying 3D versions of this, suitable for working on shared models, will not help. And, crucially, BIM does not require the use either of 3D software or of specific packages. Instead it is about sharing information, and the way that the information is to be shared is through a format known as COBie, essentially an Excel spreadsheet into which participants in a project will enter and share relevant data.

This is the format that the government has decreed that it wants for the adoption of BIM in its projects. It has said that all government-funded projects must be executed in Level 2 BIM by 2016. Level 2 essentially means that participants in a project exchange information in an approved format, and that format will, it has been decided, be COBie. By having a protocol in place, there should be no double working, contractors on site

should have all the requisite information, and at the completion of the project the information can be handed over to those responsible for maintenance. BIM is in fact about the sharing of knowledge and about communication, not about the adoption of a particular computer technology. It is true that the next level, Level 3 BIM, does require the team to work on a single building model, but there are many BIM experts who believe that achieving that is still a long way off.

This was stressed at a meeting of the Government’s BIM Task Force in the autumn where the message came through clearly that, as McCapra paraphrased it, ‘The age of the big shiny model is over’.

Speakers emphasised that the whole point of COBie is that it liberates data from the model and that for many assets there will never be a ‘model’ in the sense that software vendors use.

If this sounds however as if the Landscape Institute has decided that there is nothing that needs to be done, and nothing to worry about, this could not be further from the truth. The institute’s BIM working group has been working hard on ensuring that COBie covers landscape.

Just as CAD packages that work for much of construction are not appropriate to landscape, so the work that is being done to develop COBie for the construction process will not be appropriate to much landscape /...

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Practice 2 cont.

1 — The government’s definition of the various levels of BIM

What is BIM? Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

iBIM

BIMs

Maturity

CAD

Drawings, lines arcs text etc

Tools

1

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Paper

CPIC AVANTI BS 1192 2007 User Guides CPIC, Avanti, BSI Models, objects, collaboration

File based collaboration

File based collaboration & library management

Data

BRIM

BSIM

FIM

2D

SIM

AIM

3D

Life cycle management

Level 0

IDM — Common Dictionary IFC — Common Data IFD — Common Processes ISO BIM Integrated, interoperable data

Integrated web services BIM hub

Process

work — in particular to soft landscape.

The working group is therefore developing templates for data to be included within COBie.

their physical appearance and properties but also their anticipated lifespan, their mainetenance requirements and their method of disposal.

This builds on work that has already been done on the National Plant Specification (NPS). The NPS is already partially BIM-ready since it provides a standard format for the procurement and specification of planting material. It needs to be expanded for BIM, particularly to provide information on maintenance and management, since the government defines BIM as ‘creating, managing and sharing of the properties of an asset throughout its lifecycle’.

The challenge of an IFC data model approach is similar to the challenge of COBie — how to avoid including too much data. In the case of COBie this would result in spreadsheets that are so long and demanding that nobody would have the ability or the will to fill them in. With IFC data models, the problem would be that the amount of information contained in a model built up from detailed objects would be so great that the model could only be manipulated on the most powerful computers.

Tim Calnan of CS Design Software, who is on the BIM working group, believes that COBie is an interim position and the future of BIM will be the Industry Foundation Class (IFC) data model as a deliverable. Like 3D models, which have been discussed for over a decade but are only finding wider use now, the concept of an IFC data model is not a new idea. The principle of this approach is relatively simple. It is a data schema comprising information covering the many disciplines that contribute to a building or space throughout its lifecycle: from conception, through design, construction and operation to refurbishment or demolition. The model consists of objects which hold the information about not only

Still these are problems that will be overcome because they have to be overcome. And one can then imagine plant objects being available to import into IFC data models. (If there is an emphasis on the soft landscape elements in the Landscape Institute’s work this is because these are the ones that are least likely to be covered by architectural or engineering design packages).

a very limited palette if its data were to be translated. Calnan believes that additional information will be required, perhaps from a range of sources to ensure an appropriate palette of planting backed up by reliable data on plant requirements, maintenance, and even cost and availability.

That is for the future however. At present, the main focus is on producing the templates for inclusion in the COBie spreadsheet, consulting on them and disseminating the results. At the same time, the Institute will continue to run workshops. It is eager to find examples of practices that are working with BIM already. If you are involved in a BIM project and can share insight or have some particular concerns, or if you are having particular issues raised by clients, then please contact the institute’s head of IT Jim Riches on jimr@landscapeinstitute.org.

The National Plant Specification is an excellent tool in terms of setting the parameters that need to be covered but it is very restricted, for historic reasons, in terms of the number of plant species that it covers. It would therefore produce Landscape Spring 2013

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Knowledge

By SUSANNAH CHARLTON

Knowledge: Recent legislation It can be hard to keep up with legislative changes — this roundup points you in the right directions.

National Planning Policy Framework (March 2012) The NPPF has condensed 1500 pages into 50 pages of broad-brush policies.

Consultation is continuing about how these policies will work in practice.

The legislation: • Establishes a presumption in favour of sustainable development and core planning principles (paras 7 & 17); • Requires good design, and design review by local planning authorities (paras 56–63); • Requires Local Plans to take account of climate change, and particularly flood risk (para 99/100); • Promotes the creation and enhancement of green infrastructure (para 114); • Sees the Local Plan as setting strategic priorities and planning guidance for each area (paras 165–8); • Explicitly endorses the importance of protecting the character of the area, good landscaping, streetscape, and green and other public space.

It should encourage quality landscaping, provide opportunities for landscape 58

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architects to participate in design review panels, and support the importance of green infrastructure. Understanding the Local Plan will be crucial to ensuring that any landscape development meets the requirements of the local authority. http://bit.ly/XPxKwa

Localism Bill (Nov 2011) Changes to regional and neighbourhood planning have resulted in a more streamlined but therefore less strategic approach. This could lead to the erosion of local landscape character through incremental development.

Regional strategies have been abolished, policies created to strengthen local consultation and decision-making, and the right of local communities to develop established. Usefully, the act establishes a duty to co-operate in the planning of sustainable development.

The bill as enacted: http://bit.ly/U0BvgV There is a Plain English guide to the bill here: http://bit.ly/UfxZmk

Natural Environment White Paper (June 2011) An update on progress was published in July 2012. Positive developments include: • Establishment of 41 Local Nature Partnerships; • An extra £750,000 to support

landscape-scale partnerships that narrowly missed-out on Nature Improvement Area (NIA) funding; • The Green Food Project report published; • Natural England fact files for England’s 159 Landscape Character Areas; • A new report on reducing peat use and responsible sourcing of all growing media • Initial findings of the Ecosystem Markets Task Force • Development of the national biodiversity network. http://bit.ly/UIXUA0

Flood & Water Management Act (2010) Following consultation with the Landscape Institute, the Secretary of State has issued revised guidelines on how a local flood authority can contribute to sustainable development, potentially useful support for GI schemes. http://bit.ly/SZIvzt Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act (2010) covers proposals for increased uptake of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) in England including the requirements for SuDS Approving Bodies in Unitary or County Councils and National Standards for the design, construction, operation and maintenance of SuDS. Following consultation last year, Government is still developing these proposals and the secondary legislation needed to implement them.

01235 859300 www.davidharber.co.uk

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Culture

By Alastair McCapra

Music and movement Composer Ben Mawson has created a musical response to landscapes which gives listeners a unique and unrepeatable immersive experience — and he is eager to collaborate with landscape architects.

C

omposer Ben Mawson creates

musical landscapes, what he

calls ‘music you can walk inside,

like an invisible sculpture’.

Of course the first thing I want to know when I meet him is whether he is a relative of Thomas Mawson who founded the Landscape Institute. Unfortunately not, though that probably would have been too good to be true.

Many people have linked music to a landscape before, but not in the way Mawson does. ‘We normally hear in time only,’ he says. ‘I wanted to create space as a layer of musical experience.’ Everyone who walks through his musical landscape hears the same piece of music, but no two people have exactly the same experience.

What you hear and how you experience it depends on where you are, how you move through the space, and how long you spend in each place.

Mawson makes recordings, usually of the sung or spoken word. He then manipulates 60

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silence between them. The result is that from a multi-layered but fixed digital output you can get an infinite number of unique experiences.

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the sound to different degrees so that some of it is clearly intelligible, some of it is blurred, and some of it is just ‘pure’ sound.

Next he uses this material to create 51 distinct tracks of sound. From these tracks material is extracted in different ways to form the content of each of the dozens of circles that make up a whole composition of this kind. Circles vary from a single voice to a block of densely layered sounds, or short independent events. Some repeat while others play only once, all are different lengths and in different sized areas.

He then looks at his chosen landscape and chooses points to which each of these tracks will be linked by GPS. The idea is that within a given space there will be ripples of sound emanating from particular points. Some are independent, some overlap, and some have gaps of

To experience the music you need an android phone and software called NoTours — you download a file, connect your headphones, and then just walk as you like through the landscape. (For technical reasons this won’t work with iphones).

The experience is incredible. This is the first time I have felt totally ‘immersed’ in a piece of music. You are in the music and not passing by it. The most fascinating places for me were the ‘sweet spots’ where the sound from two or more points in the piece mixes together, and incredible harmonic textures flow over each other until you decide to move on. It sounds completely natural and spontaneous when it is of course the most carefully composed part of the whole experience.

Mawson’s recent projects are a piece called ‘Take Me By The Hand’ which was installed at the newly reopened Jubilee Gardens in London in April 2012, and a music and landscape project in Southampton in October, which was visited by Akash Wadhawan, landscape architect at Hyland Edgar Driver.

‘Listening to a musical composition which responded to the surrounding space was

1 — Composer Benjamin Mawson. 2 — Jubilee Gardens, London, redesigned by West 8, was the site of one of Mawson’s compositions when it reopened last April. 3 — Mawson’s ‘circles’ for a project surrounding St Paul’s in London. 4 — The different strands of a Mawson composition. 5 — Visitors access the music through an android phone.

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unique,’ said Wadhawan. ‘As I walked, the music changed. Walking next to a brook, I could hear an amplified sound of running water. Coming down the hill, the steps were the predominant sound. This adds another layer of experience in getting to know a place, whether a geographical, historical or cultural landscape.’

Photo ©: 2 — West 8.

One of the figures who inspired Mawson was architect and composer Iannis Xenakis, who both worked in Le Corbusier’s studio and studied music with Olivier Messaien. Xenakis was fascinated by the interplay between the visual and the musical. In the 1970s he devised a computer system called UPIC, which could translate graphical images into musical results. One of the pieces he created this way is Mycenae-Alpha which is earsplitting at thebeginning and pretty abstruse throughout. Mawson’s music is completely different in tone and texture — warm, intriguing and compelling.

When I ask Mawson whether he would like to work with landscape architects, he is immediately enthusiastic. ‘The GPS technology won’t work indoors’ he confesses ‘so what I do has to be an outdoors experience. I really like the idea of working with a landscape designer to create a total experience for the visitor, both visual and acoustic. Do you know any landscape architects who might be interested?’

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4

5

Find out more Visit Ben’s website www.benjaminmawson.com Alastair McCapra is chief executive of the Landscape Institute.

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A word...

By Tim Waterman

Greenspace

I

The sense of threat and abandonment that was evident in the city centre spilled over into the park. Human figures were barely visible in the dark under a pedestrian bridge, and a too-ripe human smell issued forth. Groups of indigents occupied groups of benches. Even a great park in a booming city can become emblematic of failure.

But what about that great object of our affection, the park? A good public park is a symbol of our collective wealth and the benevolence of government. Look at the Royal Parks, for example. They are beacons, not just to the British citizenry, but to the world, of the wealth and well-being of our nation. Elsewhere, though, some towns are simply shot through with holes of neglect masquerading as parks that are wells of unease and disease.

I went to Rio de Janeiro recently, interested to learn what I could from the public spaces of a country that is burgeoning. I found some mixed messages, but on the whole cause for optimism. Rio’s great parks and squares are largely the legacy of either 62

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colonial times or of heavy government investment in the 1960s, Roberto Burle Marx’s Copacabana Beach being the most visible and memorable example.

I walked through another remarkable park, the northernmost area of the beautiful Flamengo Park, on a Sunday. Native species that were dear to Roberto Burle Marx are planted there, by his hand, and the precise geometries of modernist buildings float above the greensward. The historic centre of Rio is adjacent, with a range of fine buildings of different ages (but with notably execrable contemporary buildings), but, like the City of London, it is empty and desolate on weekends.

What perhaps impressed me most about Rio was the way the parks melded with the streets. Green infrastructure is absolutely everywhere in Rio, at least in the more salubrious neighbourhoods. Even simple tree pits do double duty as homes for both trees and vines, and plants are squeezed into every possible niche. Ipanema, particularly, is punctuated with squares that are full of life and just the right size, and the tree-lined streets make seamless links with the surrounding city. The whole city feels like a park. This is the best way for us to envision the future of landscape practice.

Rather than marking out discrete sites for ‘greening’ we should see our task not as filling a void within a masterplan, but as an act of facilitation that is integrative, connective, and communicative.

Tim Waterman is a landscape architectural writer, speaker and critic, who lectures at the Writtle School of Design and is a studio tutor at UCL Bartlett School of Architecture. His books on landscape architecture have been translated into seven languages. He is the honorary editor of Landscape.

Photo ©: Agnese Sanvito.

t is commonly assumed, and often dogmatically trumpeted, that our cities will be better places with greater quantities of ‘green space’. ‘Green’ is a word as replete with positive associations as ‘space’ but each as woolly and nebulous as the other. We now inelegantly mash the two words together to form ‘greenspace’ — which then becomes further devoid of meaning. The reality of ‘greenspace’ in most of the UK is actually a legacy of SLOAP (Space Left Over After Planning), those bits of gristle in the urban tissue exemplified by an unusable plot of unkempt lawn, surrounded by fencing, punctuated with beer cans, and festooned with flapping Tesco bags.

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