Month: May 2017

Gardens for the Love of Gardens

With Chelsea Flower Show in full swing this week, we sent one of our Directors off on a jolly (I mean “networking”) day to report back on this years flower show delights and all this talk of Chelsea, got me to thinking…

We all know Chelsea flower show is the gold standard of garden design. It is the elite, the Oscars of the garden design world. It’s where every self respecting designer aspires to be; battling it out for one of the much coveted Chelsea Flower Show medals and with a bit of luck and a fair wind, maybe that medal will be a gold. We’d all love to win gold at Chelsea and though most of our team have in some shape or form been a part of gardens at Chelsea, whether that’s joint efforts, planting teams or general dogs body, we’ve yet to exhibit our wares on Main Avenue as a practice and we’ll be first to admit, that yes, that’s part of the dream. But I wonder, is that all it is?

And the answer quite simply, is no. Chelsea for us is like a conference. Strange though it sounds, it’s a huge and diverse learning experience where garden designers, landscape architects and professionals from across the industry come together to create. There’s passion there, in abundance. Where else can you attend an event which showcases the best work, from the best garden designers across the world? Where else do you have the opportunity to discover each different designer’s concepts and journey from the abstract to the tangible? Where else can you see this hugely diverse range of gardens close up and in one outing? This is a garden design conference of the highest order.

More than this, Chelsea Flower Show takes us back to those days in the studio as students when we had briefs with seemingly endless budgets and no constraints on the imagination. The education of landscape architects and garden designers is criticised for not truthfully representing the restrictions of clients and industry (budgets, preferences, red tape) and maybe there’s something in that. But on the reverse, how can you see the extraordinary talent of the newest designers if you place those kinds of constraints on them. Being a student is about learning, it’s about learning without limits in order to see how far our outstretched fingertips can reach. Our student days allowed us to sail frighteningly close to the wind and design landscapes that were bold and sometimes radical. Surely that’s where every designer aspires to be most of the time? And yes, although Chelsea Flower Show does have clients and briefs and budgets (in some cases comparatively small ones), it doesn’t seem to have the same red tape restrictions as day to day design work. It’s an environment where literally anything goes. This year for example; Jon Wheatley has brought a weed to the roads of Chelsea, James Alexander-Sinclair has made water move to music and best in show winner James Basson traded traditional beauty for stark brutality in order to stay true to his ecological message.

I am not saying, as designers, we aren’t all practices that push the boundaries in the every day, here at Studio 31, that’s a core part of our ethos. This year alone, we’ve designed tree houses, amphitheatres and gin bars and I imagine every designer tries to innovate in their work. But Chelsea asks for something more; something different and unique in attitude, approach and perception. And that something means that when we walk the aisle of Main Avenue, we get to see our peers and associates in a way that we don’t often get to see them; full of pride at their own extraordinary achievements and full of professional awe and mutual respect for their peers around them.

Perhaps veteran of Chelsea Flower Show Chris Beardshaw (who designed our favourite garden of this year) put it perfectly when he said that for him it’s not about the medals, it’s about presenting something you believe in and seeing the “response of gardeners” that come to see it. It’s the opinions of the public, not the judges, that is the real reward.

Chelsea ignites a passion inside garden designers and that passion, consequently ignites a spark inside the many thousands of people who flock to this sold out event to look at gardens that have sprung from the imaginations of the humble few who get to show case there. What is it that the public love about Chelsea? Chelsea is like a firework show, it is joy for joys sake, it is gardens for the love of gardens and maybe it’s that, not the medals that makes it the industry gold standard.

 

 

Photo by Annie Spratt

A moment of perspective

Over two days this past week, some of our team visited the grand designs exhibition at the Excel Centre in London’s Docklands and what seemed like a perfectly normal office outing, became a much larger lesson in perspective giving.

An event, much more popular with architects than landscape professionals, it’s perhaps not the first place you’d think to find a landscape architect on their day off. Grand designs may sound like a gimmick but it’s actually an exhibition with a lot of heart. If you are an “average Joe” with big dreams and big ideas about designing and building your own home, this exhibition brings everything you need or more importantly “need to know”, under one roof.

On a practical level, it is an opportunity to talk (for free) to professionals across a whole range of fields, to discover the latest design technologies and perhaps more importantly get an abundance of advice on self build issues large and small.

So why were we there? Well, it sounds obvious but the landscape has an awful lot to do with buildings. We wrote a blog recently on how the landscape can add exponential value to your home. When we look out the window of our homes, it’s the landscape we see, when the sun is shining, it’s the garden we sit in or park that we head for. We choose building plots or houses for their location and often proximity to nature and the countryside.

Landscape is so intrinsic to building that often, in fact, architects even have to consider the landscape before they can get planning permission to build some of the most innovative and unusual homes. Landscape and visual impact assessments or LVIAs as they are known are the starting point for many buildings so we (as landscape architects) can assess the impact they will have and mitigate against it before they are even built.

Architects and Landscape architects are intrinsically connected in the work they do. As landscape professionals we work with architects all the time, we understand planning process and know about all the aspects of landscape design down to the very finite detail and about how that connects to the building. That said, we are a long way from being architects and the opportunity to speak to some of the most established and remarkable architects in the field enabled us to discover some of the latest perspectives and trends in the world of architecture. More interestingly still, we had the opportunity to do this with a second hat on as we have secretly squirrelled away a grand design of our own so took the chance to get some advice (and potentially an architecture partnership) on that too. Interesting indeed to talk to architects in a personal rather than professional capacity.

But despite the professional and personal benefits of visiting Grand Designs, this was far from the most remarkable thing about our trip. Between roaming the stalls and listening to the dulcet tones of Charlie Luxton and Piers Taylor we sat, coffee in hand and just watched. And in life, it’s the moments between moments that are sometimes the most significant. What we saw was people; people with aspirations, dreams and ideas. People excited to discover and learn and craving inspiration or someone to inspire them.

As professionals, we are all driven by different agendas; outstanding design, sustainable solutions, finding opportunities for creative flair. Perhaps we value the traditional or the contemporary or the challenge of a tricky space or an inopportune site. What motivates us is different for every professional but what we are often quick to forget is that all our professional practices and aspirations only exist because of the boldness of our clients. It is easy to forget in our passion for our field that it’s not our money we spend or our lives we affect change upon. The awards we, as professionals, win and the incredible buildings or landscapes we create only exist because of the courage of our clients to pursue their dreams and to trust us to tread those journeys with them. An important reminder of our roles and moment of reflection, in our remarkable adventure on the road of landscape architecture.

 

 

Photo by Marcus Wallis