11 minute read
A champion for landscape architecture
Exploring Dartmoor’s windswept beauty and tranquillity. © Moritz Heukamp
As Carolin Göhler becomes President-elect, she sets out her vision and chooses some of her favourite landscapes.
When I take on the role of the Landscape Institute’s President, I will look to be an ambassador for our profession – promoting knowledge and skills, highlighting our work in creating quality green spaces and working landscapes that showcase our industry. I would like to amplify the importance of our work in creating tranquil spaces to relax that contribute to everyone’s wellbeing, and to protect and enhance our built and natural heritage and biodiversity for all to experience and enjoy. Reflecting on these aims highlights just how diverse our industry is and the positive impact it has everywhere.
The President’s role requires representation of our profession and promotion of our work, benefiting the public and individuals alike. My aim will be to help to disseminate our collective views, which are crystalised in the strategic advice, specialist guidance and response notes that inform our members, wider professional cohort, partners, the public and government and others.
I believe the Presidency is about landscape and our profession, and it is a privilege to represent and to celebrate our collective achievements. Perhaps never before has the value we can bring to all aspects of life been so important, whether this is creating imaginative green spaces that are better for communities, or in my view the wider support for the health and wellbeing of both people and nature. Almost every day we hear and maybe experience the accepted adverse man-made impacts on the environment, and this is our biggest challenge and opportunity. For too long we have manipulated nature, often for our own gains, and as landscape professionals we have a big role to play to mitigate, reduce and positively combat climate change, and to help address the biodiversity emergency. We are uniquely placed as a profession to do so in urban, rural and wild environments.
Early on in my life I was entranced by observing wildlife on a farm; I embraced the notion that we cannot live well without caring for nature. Starting my professional career as an apprentice at an herbaceous perennial nursery gave me an early insight into horticulture and the diversity of both native and cultivated plants. This was shaped further through encouragement by many inspirational professionals during my career, helping me to gain not only confidence but also expertise for design ideas and best management of a wide range of landscapes. I am a wholehearted supporter of the apprenticeships that the LI has introduced, as these enable a wider range of people to become landscape professionals. Importantly, they provide a balance between theory and practice and the opportunity to be paid and work flexibly during training, which is key to being inclusive. Combined with university routes and LI mentorship as part of the Pathway to Chartership, there is now a good and clear route for guiding all, whatever their background, to becoming a professional landscape practitioner.
The Rio Earth Summit 1992 highlighted to the wider world the integral relationship between people, commerce and nature and the need to use natural resources sustainably – to pass on a functional and healthy world to the next generations.
I studied landscape architecture at the University of Newcastle, where I was particularly motivated to work using strategies which unified social, natural and economic realms. At the time, my thinking was heavily influenced by the Rio Earth Summit 1992, at which for the first time the wider world acknowledged the integral relationship between people, commerce and nature. It clearly highlighted the need to use natural resources sustainably and to ensure that we pass on a functional and healthy world to the next generations. Three decades on, the Institute has taken on a stronger leadership role in this area, despite insufficient action from many regional and national governments. As landscape professionals, we still have a mountain to climb ourselves, not just to make the Landscape Institute’s operational side carbon zero by 2030, but also to take action to reduce our own carbon footprints wherever we live or work with landscapes.
The UK has an advanced economy and we must recognise our excessive use of resources, and that we must do more to tackle climate change and the biodiversity emergency impacts. If we do not address these fundamentals now, it will only further social inequalities and fail to fully address the depletion of nature at home and worldwide. Global poverty continues to grow, as does the migration of people due to many causes, from wars to the impacts of climate. We can help by working more closely with communities to provide some of the basics of life, from functional, beautiful, nature-rich landscapes to diverse urban landscapes. The need for urban green spaces was brought into sharp focus by the Covid pandemic, which both highlighted inequalities and reminded us all of the value of green spaces – as an essential for everybody.
Understanding changes of the population and community dynamics requires a broad spectrum of landscape professionals in terms of equity, diversity and inclusion to best understand and address communities’ needs. In the next decades, in an increasingly uncertain world, we are going to experience societal and landscape changes at both a small and large scale. I see this shift already happening as part of my work advising horticulturalists and managers of heritage gardens and parklands. It is likely that lush, deep, verdant herbaceous borders will perhaps become more gappy and increasingly unsuccessful, as weather becomes more unpredictable. However, replacement plantings will need to be quite different, perhaps will be likely to have more blue and grey tones, be spikier and will be hugely more dynamic, as a more resilient approach to horticulture is taking a foothold. Any client, resident or visitor to parks and gardens needs to understand that these new plantings will evolve and will never quite look the same from year to year – with or without any intervention from horticulturalists. We are already seeing more profound changes in the landscape, with fine parkland lawns vanishing and being managed as flower-rich meadows, or farmed landscapes changing with different crops growing or pastoral landscapes disappearing.
In my career, I have been involved at senior policy level, such as aiding the development of Cambridgeshire’s first Greenspace Strategy and regional planning processes. I have also worked with the design of small and large green places and the management of green spaces – from gardens, parklands, urban places and nature spaces to farmed land. I care deeply for green spaces and I am pleased that parks managers are now also able to join the Institute, recognising the skills brought by these specialists are absolutely critical to the longevity and quality of spaces that have been designed and implemented.
I am pleased that parks managers are now also able to join the Institute as their specialist skills are absolutely critical to the longevity and quality of designed and natural spaces.
The Institute has ongoing strategic plans to take us forward and help us punch above our weight; given our limited resources, we have a track record of always doing so – together with members, staff, volunteers and partners. Like many organisations, there is a continuing need to focus our efforts to improve the LI internally, including as per independent advice received, but, moreover, we need to ensure that we develop the important roles the Landscape Institute and landscape professionals have to play for the common good.
My career has been shaped by many inspirational tutors, horticulturalists, wildlife and landscape professionals – a big thanks goes to all supporting any newcomers.
Our current Strategic Plan review will commence in autumn this year and I look forward to some interesting discussions. Listening to all voices within the membership is vital, as well as looking externally to our wider partners. Crucially, it will take the LI to its Centenary Year – how much has our profession changed from the initial British Association of Garden Architects to the Institute of Landscape Architects and now the Landscape Institute. Ongoing change has enabled us to undertake the complex and intricate work we do today – it takes not just passion but also expertise and skills on many levels, good teamwork and partnership working, to create place changes for the better. Having a plan is one thing, but most importantly we need the Landscape Institute to be the professional body that continues to deliver.
We should recognise that, for the LI to remain forward-looking during fast-changing times, it is essential to innovate and adapt rapidly. Since being involved with the Landscape Institute as well as other charities and membership organisations, I have realised that the Landscape Institute also needs further modernisation becoming more efficient and adapting to today’s way of thinking, working and best practice and with a strong awareness that the younger generation has quite a different understanding of membership organisations and their relevance.
As a champion or advocate, one has to take a balanced view, representing the majority of the membership – not an easy task when at times opinions are diverse. However, we have an ongoing need to highlight the value of our profession and to strive forward to tackle all the current difficulties and opportunities and those lying ahead. In my career I have learned to appreciate that any contemporary charity has to take itself as a business seriously and work efficiently. Good decision-making and ongoing adaption is also crucial –we have still some work to do, and, working together, we can achieve much.
In my career I have been fortunate as I mostly worked for local authorities and charities designing and managing beautiful and functional green spaces for many deserving communities to enjoy.
Carolin Göhler
Dip. Hort, Kew (Hons), MLD, FLI
• Over 35 years’ experience working as a Chartered Landscape Architect and Horticulturalist, including time at an herbaceous perennial nursery in Germany, the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens
• Long involvement with heritage environments such as registered historic parks and gardens and other historic landscapes
• For over a decade, as CEO, ran a charity with a diverse portfolio of countryside and heritage properties, environmental education and planning watchdog activities in and around Cambridge
• Particular interests include the promotion of hardy herbaceous perennials, green roofs, rain gardens and sustainable drainage, increased usage of ornamental native species within the public realm, garden and landscape restoration and innovation within heritage gardens and parklands
• Currently working for over five years as a Gardens and Parks Consultant for the National Trust
• Key roles at the Landscape Institute have included: Chair of the East of England Branch (2008–14), Treasurer (2014–19) and most recently Vice President (2019–21)
• Current volunteering includes the local parish council, trustee of an old Tithe Barn and Green Flag Award Judge.
