Has the Landscape Institute lost its way?

There is a huge split building between the Landscape Institute (LI) and its members over the crisis surrounding the retention of the LI archive and library.

Without such a comprehensive historical and educational resource at the centre of the organisation, many feel that the LI will become little more than a trade association for exterior designers.

My guest today is Amanda Davey. Amanda is a landscape researcher and photographer who runs her own research company - Tilia Services.

Read Amanda's piece and ask yourself - can the Landscape Institute survive without its archive?

The Archive is a real thing!

The Landscape Institute library and archive have been much debated over recent months. Most of this has, very rightly, dealt with the principles of a professional body losing its heritage - Writes Amanda Davey.

I believe that the principle and the reality of the archive itself are intertwined, and that the situation is actually turning into a very fundamental threat to a good profession and how it sees itself in the eyes of the world.

This time last year I had never visited the LI Archive. I had a vague notion that it existed, but if I had been asked to describe what it contained I would have conjured up some notion of dusty boxes and old letters. Not to my credit at all, as a researcher I really should have known better. Then in April I attended a symposium at the Museum of Garden History on “Design Drawings in Gardens” and as a result, my entire view altered radically.

Annabel Downs was a speaker passionate and knowledgeable about her subject. She talked clearly and calmly about an archive I was astounded to hear of, and felt rather guilty to have ignored. Key names from landscape architecture in this country and around the world came alive with their drawings and notes.

After her talk I can remember at least four people standing up and offering their help as volunteers. In my experience this is unprecedented. After a few days of processing what I had learnt it was my turn to offer what help I could, based on experiences I had had in my career as a landscape architect and in a previous life.

The archive contains some remarkable material. Geoffrey Jellicoe drawings being included was not actually a big surprise, but the reality of them is stunning.

There are Brenda Colvin drawings and there is Sylvia Crowe material - Peter Shepheard’s work in his sketchbooks and in his collection of drawings is amazing. There are photographs taken by Susan Jellicoe and Brenda Colvin. There are photographic slides from Cliff Tandy and my personal inspiration - the late great Martin Jones.

The paper files represent the early days of the Institute of Landscape Architects and the personal statements made humbly by the people we now consider to be the great names. The scope of these collections is amazing and of great potential value to the profession and to students learning their craft.

Annabel Downs and Sheila Harvey have worked incredibly hard over the past 15 years or so building this strong archive to operate alongside the very fine library that Sheila was rightly given official recognition for last autumn. They have contacted people and lobbied for funding.

Now that it has reached the stage where it can be properly publicised, suddenly through nothing that any of the people involved have done, the plug is pulled and decisions are being made flying in the face of the membership vote of the Landscape Institute. Utter madness!

My brother works in the finance industry and has therefore seen his share of mismanagement, but he threw his hands up in horror and said, unprompted, “How can a professional body which wants to take itself seriously even contemplate such an act?” The National Archive have said to me “We are concerned that a Royal Chartered institution of the standing of the Landscape Institute should be considering the steps you outline.”

The archive and the library are unique in their scope and range. The development of design ideas is often present, that would matter enormously to a landscape architect. This is recognised as such by someone of Annabel’s calibre. An archive with less professional awareness and commitment would be prepared to lose what appear to be tatty remnants.

The accompanying photograph I took last month in the Falkland Islands.

It is of San Carlos Blue Beach memorial cemetery. The main design for this came as a result of a small pencil sketch done by Peter Shepheard for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission when he was their Honorary Artistic Advisor.

The concept is a livestock corral of a similar size and construction that occurs frequently on the Falklands. It has the combined function of a graveyard for 14 servicemen lost in 1982 (plus one casualty 2 years later), a symbolic memorial for those lost at sea during the Falklands Conflict of 1982, as well as a key ceremonial site for services of remembrance.

Annabel and I think that the original sketch is one of the Peter Shepheard drawings in the LI archive, but the suspension of access has made it impossible to confirm. Certainly there should be relevant material in the sketchbooks.

There are those who believe that a library and archive are now defunct in this era of digital access to the internet and electronic data. It is only correct that many of the dynamics are changing. There is an inherent transience in the Internet. Go to a Wikipedia article, for example, and it changes from one day to the next!

Who is to select what is accurate and what is not? At least with a book it is not the equivalent of your Labrador puppy upstairs posting spurious ideas as fact all on his own. Digital material has a beginning, middle and unfortunately usually an unpleasant end. At the beginning is the scan. In the middle is the usage. At the end is the data corruption or media failure. I will not go into the requirements for a continuing collections strategy - it is too much and not appropriate.

All I will say here is that just because a file is handy to search for and open on your computer now, that does not mean that it will be possible to see it in six months, or six years time. Multiply that problem by the number of high calibre landscape schemes currently in preparation or construction and in fact you start to make a case FOR a well-considered and run archive under the control of the landscape profession and not against it at all.

“The landscape profession.” Interesting phrase. What does it mean? I believe that the situation of the LI library and archive is inextricably linked to our sense of identity and what we do.

For my entire career there have been attempts to rename the profession because other people don’t seem to understand what it is we do. Do we actually fully understand what it is we do? Much of my own career has been spent working on World Heritage sites and landscape planning work, neither of which are actually recognised by the Landscape Institute!

Are we involved in good quality design that is going to allow our trees to mature? Or are we, as the Garden History Society website put it, having our professional chartered body turned into a Trade Union (I think they had Trade Association more in mind). If that is the case and we actually do produce nothing of lasting value then it could be called the Association of Exterior Designers.

I happen to believe that it is of vital importance that we do value the work that we do and that we expect that it will last for long enough that looking back over the original design drawings will be of value. Or was the Royal Charter just because we want the kudos and not because we believe in ourselves?

The material in the Landscape Institute archive covers many different periods in the middle of the twentieth-century and had started to become a key research tool for international levels of interrogation.

There is much from the era of concrete that so recently we may have been trying to forget. Now there is a growing lobby to save, restore and learn about that period. Some designs were wiser than we knew, but some terrible mistakes were made. How can we tell the difference if we don’t value it enough to care for it ourselves?

If we don’t fight the decisions the Landscape Institute are making now, we stand the very real risk of losing our professional organisation completely. We do need to show them that we care deeply about our professional credibility. Now.