Online teaching around the world

Spend just a little bit of time in the company of Andrew Fisher Tomlin and who knows what topics you might end up discussing.

The engaging co-founder of the London College of Garden Design and co-founder of Fisher Tomlin & Bowyer Garden Designers and Landscapers, has an alert, inquisitive, mind, which means subjects as diverse as teaching methods; how the pandemic and recession have impacted the industry; the mis-use of volunteer labour; charitable support; Brexit and the naughtiest things people get up to in their gardens, might just get an airing.

Those are just some of the topics we covered during a wide-ranging chat, which could easily have continued for much longer. Despite the fact that he had been up since 5am delivering teaching to students at LCGD Melbourne Australia, Andrew was not the one who drew the conversation to a conclusion.

He has been a significant figure within the industry for well over three decades, having launched Fisher Tomlin & Bowyer with Dan in 1991, and been involved in some of the country’s most prestigious landscaping work. Take this as an example. Andrew was a horticulture specialist for the London Olympics and worked on the first artificial wetlands as part of the project.

“It was phenomenal. The biggest landscaping project in Europe for 150 years and we pulled it off in just seven years. I just look at that and think it was quite cool to be involved. Things like that were brilliant to work on,” said Andrew, speaking from his London study.

Two years ago he stepped back from Fisher Tomlin & Bowyer, selling his share to Dan, but continuing to work for the company.

“I don’t own any of it now. Dan employs me. I’ve got to that age…” he said by way of explanation.

That’s not an indication that Andrew is minded to slow down any. While he is no longer a Director of Fisher Tomlin & Bowyer, his teaching work has expanded significantly in recent years.

“We took about 18 months to get LCGD Melbourne off the ground and launched in 2020, a week before lockdown. It meant a slow start, as in the State of Victoria they had 540 days of continuous lockdown, but we got through the first couple of years and now it’s taken off.

“It is a very different offer to what the Australian market is used to. In the UK we have private colleges offering courses, as well as the state funded ones but in Australia that is quite unusual and there wasn’t anyone offering strictly garden design courses. They tend to have technical colleges and teach in a modular way to fit in with the Australian Government’s requirements on awards. It meant every college did the same modules.

“My colleague, Brent Reid, in Melbourne, said that he always wished that he could have done his training with us, as we teach in a layered fashion rather than being modular,” explained Andrew.

He had launched a planting design course 10 years ago, following a chat he and Andrew Wilson had about how he was annoyed about having to judge the same things at Chelsea every year.

“Obviously it’s at the end of May so you are going to get similar plants, but the designs were all very similar, because they had been taught how to do it the same way.

“So that year I stopped judging, wrote the course and it has gone from strength to strength ever since with many people attending from all over the world. There is nothing else quite like it for professional level planting design and we have had some really good support from the industry and some amazing people to come and teach on it.

The popularity of the courses, and the fact that they attracted students from all corners of the globe, meant that Andrew and his team were already working on-line and remotely when the pandemic did strike. The rest of us were struggling to become acquainted with on-line platforms like Zoom, Teams and Google Meets.

“About six months before the pandemic struck we started experimenting with doing professional development on-line. We used to do a course which involved 12 two-hour long sessions and we’d do it at Regent’s Park, but we discovered that there was a much bigger potential market because people were telling us that they wanted to do it but couldn’t get to Regent’s Park.

“So we started to experiment and had got our heads around on-line training. We went on Zoom which was very flexible for us,” he explained.

The LCGD courses are now conducted in real time on-line and with our Garden Design Diploma we have people from all over Europe and the west coast of America taking part.

“They might come over for the final part of the course.”

Another course which has thrived under the new style is Construction Design.

“We had people saying to us that they had done a garden design course but never learned about construction design and while we’d included 10 days on that on our courses we kept being asked for more.”

“So we set up a 24 day course which runs in the autumn. It’s been really successful. In fact, a student of mine who graduated on Friday said that she’d just done this very detailed and complex deck which she’d surveyed and designed and when the contractor quoted for the job he said that it was so well done he’d only dispute her on two millimetres. So the course is working!”

The construction design course is blended learning so the lectures are half on-line and half in Kew Gardens.

“Being able to sit around a table is good, but some students from further away find it harder to come so they can do the whole course on-line. Because we have students in small groups those on-line can still share their work with the others on laptops and tablets. Three years down the line we have got quite good at having these groups and ensuring everyone feels included,” said Andrew.

The success of the LCGD can be measured in the fact that so many former students are now established names in the industry.

“People like Tom Massey and Alexa Ryan-Mills are out there doing really well, while someone told me that at Chelsea this year a quarter of the gardens were designed by our graduates,” said Andrew, who added that Jo Thompson, who had given out the external prizes at the recent Graduation Ceremony had also been trained by himself and Andrew Wilson.

On the current state of the landscaping industry, Andrew can draw on experience which has seen him through around four recessions, with the Pandemic adding to the uncertainty in recent times.

“We all wondered what was around the corner with Covid, but horticulture was one of the few things which didn’t get hit badly. Everyone was at home looking at the spaces that they had and how they could improve them so it was great for residential design.

“Public space design, however, was put on hold and it was a different story there. Friends of mine like

Carolyn Willitts, in Manchester, saw lots of projects go on hold. That said, I think we’ve ridden a wave of two or three years which have been good for landscape and design and horticulture. It is slowing down now and in some ways Brexit still looms and has been dreadful for the country.”

Andrew was working on a garden for the Hampton Court Show when news of the EU vote was confirmed.

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“I can tell you that if you’d told anyone at Hampton Court that you’d voted leave you would probably have been thrown out of the showground.”

Andrew is a Trustee of Perennial and the charity put a lot of things in to support those in the industry at the time of the pandemic.

“A lot of the Government-backed schemes were put in place in terms of income support so our support wasn’t so necessary at the time. However, it meant that the budget put in place then are there now and are really needed during the current times.

“The increase in need within our industry is staggering, and people