Professional Status and the Society of Garden Designers

It has been a tough twelve months for the Society of Garden Designers (SGD) with many feeling that they have lost touch with 1,600 'ordinary' designers who make up ninety percent of its membership.

I would like to welcome Stephen Rice as a guest to Landscape Juice. Stephen has recently joined the Landscape Juice Network and has wasted no time in using our open platform to enter into the debate about the SGD - here I repost an article first published by Stephen on the SGD forum back in August 2009.

As noted in Duncan Heather’s article “The Society of Garden Designers: A damp squib washed up on the shores of mediocrity”, the SGD has introduced a new category “Pre-Registered” to replace the “Correspondent” category which forms the bulk of the membership, writes Stephen Rice.

Without going into too much detail, this category requires members to provide evidence of their competence and motivation to progress to full (Registered) membership, within a 5-year time period.

Discussion with my cluster group colleagues showed there was still real disillusion with the mechanism for the Society’s recognition of designers working to professional standards and the wider public’s awareness of this, so I submitted this thread to the SGD’s Members’ Forum to start a discussion of professional status.

Peter Thomas (ex SGD Chair) gave some startling statistics in his resignation letter in 2008: 10,000 “Garden Design” advertisers in Yellow Pages, but with only 1800 or so being members of the Society and only around 10% of these being Registered Members.
Why is this so? Clearly there are 2 parts to this issue:

1) Why do so few people advertising as “Garden Designers” belong to our Society?

Unlike a controlled trade such as electrician or gas installer, or a profession such as solicitor or architect, anyone can advertise and practise as a Garden Designer – even if they have no training or qualification. So, in the absence of any compulsion, the vast majority of advertisers must either be unaware of the Society or see insufficient benefits in belonging.

Very few of my colleagues have ever been asked by prospective clients if they are members of the SGD, and most think that their clients would not know what the Society is, or what membership of it represents without them explaining.

Whilst there are substantial “fringe” benefits – such as the inclusive Garden Design Journal subscription, reduced prices for seminars/conferences, access to the SGD online Members’ Forum and the cluster groups – the most important business benefit ought to be improved confidence from prospective clients.

So, wider public recognition of the SGD and the better class of designer which it represents should be paramount in gaining more members from the practising design community.

2) Why do so few members progress to become Registered?

I think this is a more thorny issue. Notwithstanding the efforts that SGD Council are making (through Registration Starts Here workshops, the Pre-Registered category change, mentoring & the revised adjudication input) to try to encourage/persuade (perhaps even oblige with the 5-year time limit on Pre-Registered grade) progression, the statistics are poor.

The process is still seen by many as a daunting, time-consuming, expensive and, ultimately, not really worthwhile proposition. The main benefits of becoming registered – apart from personal satisfaction at having proved oneself to professional peers – are seen as access to client enquiries passed on by the Society to Registered Members, the ability to “advertise” on the Society’s website and the permission to use the MSGD designation and Society logo.

Discussion with my MSGD colleagues seems to indicate that improved workflow varies a lot between individuals and the impression I get is that this benefit may be somewhat oversold by the Society at present. If this benefit is real, then it too is completely bound up with wider public recognition of the SGD and what it represents.

The Garden Design Elite:

When I attended a SGD Forum, adjudication was described as needing to be of sufficient rigour that the Society is confident of a candidate’s ability to take on work which could be for very complex and costly projects – i.e. MSGDs are the “elite” and are promoted to “elite” clients – the Society cannot afford for its reputation to be compromised by a failure to perform.

I have no argument with this, but, what about the vast majority of garden design work for “lesser” clients who still deserve a thorough, professional job doing – within the budget they have available – and what about the many garden designers who prefer to work in this area rather than the elite bracket?

The revised SGD membership structure doesn’t really give them a home – “Friend” implies a lack of professionalism and “Pre-Registered” is time-limited and only granted to those seeking to become the Registered elite. Would it even make sense to have 10,000 elite designers in practice?

The Society implicitly recognises this anomalous situation since it insists that candidates seeking registration have a portfolio of real work, from paying members of the public, gained over a period of 2 or 3 years in practice, from which to select 3-plus projects that demonstrate the breadth of ability which qualifies them for registration.

The Society also demands that they make the public aware of their membership of the Society and its Code of Conduct, whilst simultaneously telling the public that their membership category carries no professional standing.

This seems to be grossly unfair and I wonder that anyone makes it through to registration without violating this ethic, unless they are part of a group practice using the reputation of an existing MSGD to gain the work and hence experience needed.

Axioms for success:

I passionately believe that the public would be better served by a Society with a bigger membership in which designers at each level of competence were constantly striving to improve their capabilities, and that this would also be to the benefit of members of the Society at all levels. I suggest:

1) The Society should adopt a graded membership structure rather than the current “all-or-nothing” (Registered Member) in common with other professional bodies. This could be something like Associate – Member – Licentiate – Fellow, or perhaps, something more directly obvious to the public such as Bronze – Silver – Gold – Platinum.

It would allow professionals in practice to declare their approved level of competence to the public whilst still discriminating those designers who have progressed to be capable of handling more demanding projects.

This would attract more of the “advertisers” into the Society, raising its profile (and its funding!) and, at the same time, give the incentive for improving one’s professional standards and the Society and public’s recognition of this;

2) The Society should devote huge resources into publicising what it stands for and what can be expected of each grade of membership – it’s only through this that the public can be made aware of what tremendous value they get from employing a SGD member;

How to achieve this:

1) The Society must establish and document the skills which it deems necessary for a garden designer starting out in professional practice to have – if it can’t do this, whether through lack of funds/resources or through lack of will, then it should be prepared to wither and die;

2) The Society’s Education Council should liaise with design colleges to establish course syllabuses which teach these necessary skills, awarding course “credits” in much the same way as the Open University;

3) The Society should promote these colleges/courses to prospective designers such that the colleges see this as beneficial to their business plans;

4) The Society should allow a designer who has gained sufficient credits to declare their professional “Bronze-level” standing – without any further assessment. It should be the job of the colleges, not the Society, to examine students;

5) Short courses, courses in specialist areas, conferences/seminars, workshops, and so on, could all be part of the same joint approach between the Society and training providers such that additional “credits” can be earned from Continued Professional Development;

6) Progress to the “Silver” and “Gold” grades could be based on a combination of additional CPD credits and experience gained in practice – perhaps via documented proof of the monetary value of projects undertaken, rather than number of years in practice – on the notion that greater cost signifies greater complexity.

Finally, I must make clear that these are my personal views and in no way represent “group thinking” from the colleagues I’ve discussed the issues with!

Stephen Rice is a Pre-Registered member of the Society of Garden Designers.

Society of Garden Designers: website