*ENCORE EPISODE* Nature in our cities. If you're paying attention you'll notice the effect it's having on you. The slowed heart rate, a stolen moment to notice flickering leaves, buzzing insects, birds landing.
Those designed-for, natural moments in our cities aren't in stasis - they're constantly changing and also spontaneous, influencing how we move through our cities, how we use them - and how they give back to us.
In this season of Hassell Talks we've heard how spontaneous experiences are often behind the connections that bring people together; how designing in response to the perceptions of safety in rail precincts can help to encourage greater use by women, girls and the gender diverse; what workplaces need to do to become more 'magnetic'; and how listening, reflecting and learning from First Nations partners creates more inclusive experiences and connections.
In this encore episode we revisit one of our most loved conversations from earlier in our catalogue, exploring a topic that's just as relevant as ever: the significance of our emotional connections to nature in cities - and the power it has to bring people together.
Episode host, the Landscape designer, writer and gardener Jon Hazelwood is joined by writer, garden designer and TV presenter Michael McCoy as well as Professor Nigel Dunnett, responsible for some of the UK’s most spectacular planted environments like the Barbican, Buckingham Palace’s Diamond Garden and the planting designs for the London Olympic park (with his colleague James Hitchmough).
We know you'll enjoy hearing how the creation of magical experiences in our cities has the power to profoundly move, connect and bring people together.
Parts of this episode were recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people, and produced on Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung land, in Naarm.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
I'm John Hazelwood. A landscapearchitect and this is Hassell talks,
a podcast series, exploringthe diverse perspectives,
open-minded collaborations and creativeinsights that we know will be the key to
navigating the increasingcomplexities of our world.
I'm exploring a world ofdynamic planting design,
diverse and beautiful plantingthat we engage with in our cities.
(00:23):
Planting that causesto stop, take a breath,
and connect with nature in our busy lives.
And luckily the obsession crosses intothe design work that I've been working on
and has introduced me to leadingproponents of a growing movement,
a movement with many names. It'snaturalistic planting or enhanced nature,
but the name doesn't really matter.
It all comes with a desire to improveurban environments to a connection to
(00:46):
nature. In this conversation,
I'm particularly interested in ouremotional connection to planting in our
cities. How does it affect usboth physically and emotionally?
Hasler have been working closelywith Professor Nigel Dunnett from the
University of Sheffield.
Nigel has been responsible for someof the UK's most spectacular planted
environments,
projects such as the Barb in London andthe Diamond Garden at Buckingham Palace,
(01:10):
and with his colleague James Hitchmough,
the planting designs for the LondonOlympic Park back in 2012. In addition,
he's recently published the bookNaturalistic Planting Design,
which I've got set right next to meso I can refer to that. Hi Nigel,
how are you?
Hi. Yeah, good, thank you.
Is there a point or a particular landscapeor a memory that's contributed to
(01:31):
you taking this particular journeyyou've taken in planting design?
Well I think it's difficultto pinpoint one particular
place. I think it's more of afeel a feeling,
and I can remember it quitestrongly from when I was a teenager,
like an early teenager I guess,
of being out in places like a wonderfulwoodland with our spring wild flowers
(01:55):
like blue bells or inthe middle of a meadow.
And I can remember distinctlyfeeling of being part of
something bigger, but also hugelyuplifting and joyful feelings.
I remember when we met you you'djust come back from California,
I think it was the super bloom. I meanthey're obviously not quiet moments.
That's a spectacular.
(02:18):
That's true. But.
Almost event, isn't it?
It's an event where whole mountainranges change colour and you can see them
from hundreds of miles away,but when you get up close,
it's full of detail and full offascination. I think you are an actor,
you know are participantand you are part of it.
And you're not just an observerwith a low energy approach.
(02:41):
You are high energy participant.
And I think what struck me about thesuper bloom and other similar things
is the hundreds of thousands ofpeople who quite clearly have the same
experience. And it's not justan experience, it's a need.
I think it's a fundamentalneed to have this joyful,
(03:02):
uplifting, natural experience.
I was wondering if I could play devil'sadvocate and suggest that all planting
should be approached from an ecologicalperspective and not the emotional
or aesthetic concern. What doyou have to say to that?
(03:23):
I would say that attitude hasbeen the biggest mistake in the
urban greening worldover the past 50 years at
least, where people have been puttingthese sorts of attitudes and it's still an
inherent approach within naturalisticplug to design and anything ecological.
(03:43):
I take the opposite view.
I say we should be working with thepeople first agenda that it should be all
about
engaging people and creating magicalexperiences and memorable experiences
and experiences people want to repeat.
And then of course,
you work ecologically and environmentallypositively and sustainably.
(04:11):
Speaking of emotionalresponses to planting,
last year I had the opportunity tovisit a garden near Melbourne. In fact,
Nigel, you were withme. It was late March,
I think it was coming to the end of overthree months of sky high temperatures
and no rain since Christmas.
Yet this garden particularlyhad a profound effect on me.
It was full of interest, colour, texture,
(04:32):
and importantly felt of itsplace and of its environment.
The planting was the step gardenby our second guest, Michael McCoy.
Michael seems to live and breathe andwork gardens and plants. He's a writer,
a TV presenter, and of coursea garden designer. Hi Michael.
Hey John. Hey Nigel.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Well Michael, I'm gonna startwith the same question as Nigel.
(04:55):
Is there a particular personalmemory or personal landscape
that's taking you on this journey?
There's look,
there's lots and there'ssome really obvious ones with
some time that I spent at Great Dixterin England up nearly 30 years ago.
But what I do remember steppinginto this garden a back
(05:17):
kind of forgotten corner of thisgarden somewhere in Scotland.
But I just remember stepping into thissort of woodland space and kind of
gasping with
how engaged and gripped and perfectly and
magically surroundedthat I was by this space.
And I remember of going through my sensestrying to work out what is it that's
(05:41):
gripping me? What is exits something?
There was nothing of great visualor botanical interest there at all.
And really what I put it down to wasjust the way there was a perfect match
between me and the spacethat I was in dwelling.
And at that point it absolutelynailed for me that no
(06:02):
matter how decorative or ornamental orwonderful my planting is that ultimately
it is about the kind ofconversation between me physically and the spaces around
me, which is probablyalways going to elude my
total control and could possiblythank goodness for that.
You'll be asked to design all sorts ofdifferent gardens or even present them
(06:23):
whether they're formal orclipped or native or ese.
Even the work that I'm aware ofyours is that this loose term of
naturalistic and dynamic is that again,
is that because of that emotionalresponse or is it just how you've been
trained? Is it somethingspecific about that?
It is absolutely somethingspecific about that.
(06:44):
And I think the two things go back to onethat you've already touched on is that
the notion of the fleetingmoment that I've come become so
addicted to the idea that gardens are,
that one of their superpowers isto grab and harvest the joy in a
single moment.
And that we've made the mistake withpublic planting in the past of thinking
(07:07):
this needs to be as stable and asstatic as possible. And in fact,
what Nigel and James have beenlooking at for decades is planting
that does exactly the oppositeand that creates a series of
unforgettable moments. AndI love that idea of that.
If I don't go and look at this garden now,
(07:28):
I'm gonna miss something really important.
And I think to me it's exactly the samebetween listening to live music and
listening to it on a cd.
But there's also the sense for mepersonally as a gardener as a keen
home gardener is I don'twant to be fully in control.
I want there to be other forces atplay. I want this to be a partnership.
(07:48):
And so for me to be doing plantingthat starts to respond in its own way
and surprises me and delightsme is a really important part of
using kind of naturalism.
Nigel,
you kind of summed that up in one ofyour Instagram posts a few weeks ago,
I think it was you made the comment thatlast year you'd given it a Chelsea chop
(08:09):
and it didn't have anywhere near of thecharacter of this year where you've just
let everything do what it wants to do.
Exactly. I tried it, but it robbedthe plans of all personality. And
that's one of the really nice thingsabout this as well that you know,
always have the chance to learnand to try and to change. I mean,
(08:31):
I just pick up on what Michael wassaying there because one of my kind of
influences I guess was a guy calledRob Leopold who was one of the
leaders of the new perennialmovement in Holland.
And he came to this with theviewpoint of a poet and described
these things in poetic terms.
And one of the best metaphors thathe ever talked to me about was
(08:54):
thinking about these sort of plantings,
like a dance that the plants in the mix,
they're all dancing with each other andthey're ebbing and flowing and they're
all kind of, some are goingup, some down in and out,
and it's not just at one particularmoment from year to year to year,
and it's all about cycles.
I think that that is one of the reallygreat challenges of this is kind of
(09:17):
this planting is getting tothe place of a command of your
grammar and your syntaxin terms of plants and the
way they respond and the way they ebband flow through the seasons in order
to then start writing poetry with them.
We have to always rememberwhy are we doing this?
(09:39):
And of course there arevery sound, ecological,
environmental reasons for doing it,
but the human reasonsare equally important.
And I think it's interesting,particularly in the last few months,
how so much new realism isbeing put on the health and the
wellbeing aspects of green.
(09:59):
Who do you think sums that up best? What
weapons,
arrows can we have in our quiver againstthose that would try and force it down
the line of ecological purity?
Somebody I admire a lot and who I workwith a lot is Sarah Price who brings the
sensitivity of a fine artist to
(10:22):
this understanding ofhow natural systems work.
Gardens.
Apparently they make up 20 to 40% ofthe surface area of most world cities.
I they're just as important to acity's ecology is as well to some
extent more so than someof the public planting.
Do you think there's lessonsfrom the world of the garden that
(10:48):
should be listened to in theworld of public planting?
Most certainly. I think that
what people like Nigel andJames are demonstrating to us
time and time again isthat the best solutions
the elegance of the solutionsthat we're hunting for is
(11:11):
not found in a kind of simplisticworld and that we have in so
many ways in the past gone forthe most bulletproof static
planting thinking that was the solution.
When Christopher Lloyd was here in 1992,
he's the only gardener who's ever beenasked to speak to the Canberra Press Club
(11:34):
and he'd visited the new Parliament House
the day before.
So he said to the NationalPress Club obviously the
landscape architect involved new fourplants and managed to use all four of them
in his design,,, and .
(11:56):
The point being that oursolutions have been simplistic
so far, whereas to get to a placeof genuinely beautifully elegant,
simple solutions that's gonna be on theother side of a huge amount of knowledge
and a huge amount of research.
One of our guy called ChrisPackham, a really well known tv,
(12:17):
TV naturalist in the UKtweeted a little movie a
month ago of one of my pictorialmeadows in a little Scottish town on a
roundabout in the middle ofa traffic island in the city.
And he says something like really gentle,
isn't this beautiful? Shouldn'tall cities aspire to this?
(12:38):
People love it. It's a reallyproductive use of the space.
And he just had this barof negativity saying,
this has no value to wildlife,this is just gardening.
And it made me think thissense of gardening as a
derogatory term is something that kindof belittles something because you're
(13:02):
doing something that gives pleasure orthat it's for the visual as much as for
anything else, it's notseen as valid. And again,
it's something I've come across a lotthat if you are making something that
claims to be ecological but you're doingit primarily for the visual senses,
the aesthetic and for the enjoyment,
then somehow it can't be working,
(13:22):
it can't be doing its job becauseit's all about aesthetics and it's
part of a puritan streak. Wehave that unless it's hurting,
unless it causes pain,
it can't really be the achieving itsendpoint and it is causing pleasure,
then somehow that's pleasureand function can't go
(13:42):
together. So again, this iswhy the mindset needs to shift.
Is the root of the question reallywhether or not we recognise ourselves as
humans as being a part ofnature or set apart from nature.
Is that fundamentally whereit comes down to that?
Because we assume we're somehow outsideof nature that our interactions with
(14:02):
nature are essentially destructiveand essentially invalid? Is that,
is that the assumption thatthese people are applying?
Well, I think it is,
and I think the most ironic thing aboutall of this is that certainly in the
European context,
most of our most diverse and beautifuland valuable semi-natural habitats,
(14:25):
let's say meadows are totallyartificial. Of course they are.
They're the result ofagricultural management and now they had to be maintained
through nature conservationtechniques. So in effect,
some of our most valuablehabitats are gardened,
but that people wouldn't recognise thatas gardening. And the bigger picture,
(14:45):
it's gardening. You'remanipulating a natural system.
And I know in your book you talked aboutor you suggested that how we respond
to nature in our cities is sort ofinnately tied to an evolutionary history.
I suppose one of the most striking thingsthat I I've seen is when I've been in
China exploring beautiful hay meadows,
(15:07):
which are kind of remnantsthere and fast disappearing.
But I remember very distinctlybeing in a big valley
and little fragments of hay meadowsin a largely improved just green
agricultural landscape of pastureand just seeing where the local,
(15:27):
for want of a better termpeasant farmers were going
and groups of women with theirchildren at lunch times or whatever,
big landscapes full of fields.
But it was just amazing howeverybody congregated on a tiny
patch of remnant meadow and the childrenwere running through the flowers and
(15:48):
the women were sitting aroundthe edge and everything.
And these are people who clearlyhave not had a university education
or have their own wonderfulkind of private gardens.
And yet of all the placeswithin this wide expansive
choice,
this is the one place that they were allgoing to. When we make gardens and we
(16:11):
do the sort of work we do andwe kind of unlock these feelings
in people, it's anincredible thing, isn't it,
to think that throughmanipulation of space and the
way we arrange space andplants within that space,
we have the power to reach deep,
(16:31):
deep into side people's is and release
these powerful emotionswhich are in there.
They're instinctive and a lot of theproblems we have mentally and socially are
because we are in an unnaturalplace most of the time.
So I do think it's
(16:51):
the gardens and plants at onesense seem such a simple thing,
but when you really delve into it, it's,it's a profound thing that we can do.
And when you perceive that froman architectural as an architect,
the talk about controlling people'semotional response within a building has
been long established.
(17:13):
And of course what we are dealingwith in that case is it every element
is perfectly in control itperfectly in man's control and
perfectly in control of thecreator of that building.
And whereas the moment you starttalking about landscape architecture or
gardening and you're talk andall of those emotive responses,
(17:36):
you've got to have such a loose holdon this because that there's such a
beautiful humility associate that youmust carry with it because you just know
that you can't control every aspect of.
It. In our professional world,
in landscape architecture andgarden design with clients,
I guess you kind of producesomething which is static.
(17:56):
And of course in the widersustainability argument,
we then have to put so much energy,
literally energy into maintainingthese natural systems in
a static form when now when everythingthey're trying to do is to break out from
that and it's a hugelyunsustainable way of working.
So we need to kind of liberatenatural systems to behave
(18:21):
much more like they would forreal with our guidance rather than
trying to put them in cages,
which is largely what we do in ourpublic landscapes and keep them
under captivity.
I have been really movedand challenged by reading
twice in quick successionIsabella trees book wilding
(18:44):
about the wilding of netand net castle in Sussex.
I really love in there is thatunderstanding the disruption and
disturbance has proven itself to bea critical part of the maintenance of
biomass, mean, sorry, biodiversity.
And that a lot of Floreshas suffered from the
(19:09):
loss of the mega fauna 40,
50,000 years ago that used to pulldown trees and make a great big mess
in certain zones and then you would getall the opportunistic species flowing
in, et cetera.
So there's this incrediblydynamic mosaic of biodiversity in
Australia. We have thisenormous sense of remorse.
We carry this huge sense of remorseof the damage that we have caused and
(19:33):
continue to cause and therefore havethis kind of restoration mentality
about attempting to try and torestore things to back to the
way they were and minimise the amountof disruption and disturbance to that.
And yet it really seems likehistorically and going back maybe tens
of thousands of years,constant disturbance was an absolute critical part of it.
(19:57):
And certainly within the whole thingof the burning of the burning of the
forest by pre-European settlement here,we have some understanding of that.
But before any human set put on Australia,
there would have beenthis constant disturbance.
It's never ever a static stable system.
That ecology has alwaysbeen a state of war, really.
(20:22):
,
but we still have a romantic view ofwhat's natural and what isn't natural.
And that romantic view takes usback to the agricultural landscape
of preindustrial times and that's the
romantic view of what nature is beautifully mets and then that's pinned to
(20:42):
particular plant communitiesthat we have to kind of restore.
When James and I did madethe Olympic Park in London,
which was Europe's largest newurban park at the time on a
Postindustrial site,
completely contaminated in themiddle of the city surrounded by
heavy industry
(21:04):
we had to argue that this was asite for people and not a nature
restoration site for restoration ecology.
And the ironic thing aboutthat is that in the uk,
the sale of wildflowerseeds, native wildfire,
meadow seeds peaked in 2013 andit was a direct response to people
seeing the designed meadowsin the Olympic Park.
(21:28):
Is there a link between that emotionalresponse that you've talked about?
Is there a direct link to measures thatare of interest to our clients and the
developers and the investors?Is there increased footfall?
Is there increased dwell time?And in the case the highline,
is there increase in propertyprices and rental values?
I think it's really important topic and
(21:51):
it's one that's a bit distasteful tostart talking about money and economics in
these terms.
But I think this is where there is thatdirect connection between the emotional
response and then more tangible measures.
And the reason it's becoming reallyinteresting is for exactly what you said,
that I guess what I would like to seeis this transformational infiltration of
beautiful green into our cities.
(22:13):
How do we do that if it's notin a prestige project where
everybody's going that same direction,
there's loads of money and fundingand political will and so on.
But certainly people I speakto on projects that I'm either involved in or when
people wanna get meinvolved, they say, Well,
you can make the arguments and say howwonderful it is for flooding or urban
(22:35):
cooling or biodiversity or forhuman wellbeing and health,
but that doesn't really mean very muchto us who had to invest in a place or who
have to take the risk of puttinga lot of that into green.
So I think one of the things thatwe really need to move onto is
generating evidence thatde-risks investment in
(22:57):
transformational greening.
And part of that is kind of the workthat James and I do to develop techniques
that make it kind of failsafe or reasonably fail safe.
But I think the other part of it is togenerate evidence for direct measures
that have some sort of economicbenefit as well as human benefit.
Well, I wonder again, Michael,
(23:18):
is there something we can learnfrom the world of the garden?
Gardening and gardenersare the only place where
these discussions can be drawn from
in the future. Certainlyin Australia so far,
the discussion is somuch in its infancy here,
(23:38):
and so I am very aware of howcompletely powerless I would feel
to defend its potential economic benefits.
I'm just so pleased that Hassell etal have
made a commitment to start exploringthis idea in public spaces in Australia
because it is really in its infancy.
(23:59):
Yeah, one of the big projects I'vebeen involved with is called Rather
Unimaginatively, the GreaterGreen Project in Sheffield,
which is a massive street greening scheme,
bringing dynamic plantingright into the city centre.
And despite the images that you mighthave that everywhere in Sheffield is full
of this sort of stuff it'sstill very new for us.
(24:21):
And our public planting and ourgarden planting is very traditional.
And I was really concerned ina way that bringing this wild,
wild skate into the urbancore would be seen as
not appropriate. So we've done quitea lot of people surveys as well,
and one of the questions I asked,I've done this through students,
is does this type of planting fit well
(24:46):
with the surroundings? I thinkjust off the top of my head,
I've got the figures, something88% of people said yes it does.
I then come around to think,well then essentially,
what is it about this kind of planting,
this naturalistic planting that tugson my heartstrings in a unique way?
And for me,
I feel like it isprimarily a deep sense of
(25:11):
its ephemerality of passing moments.
And I also feel like there is thatthing of a sense that nature has got
a strong hand here and that I can onlyimagine that it would be a great sense of
relief for people in citiesto kind of think, Oh,
I can really see nature startingto have a bit of a playground.
Here. I really do think you've hit on it.
(25:33):
I think all of our experiences thatactually to fit best with contemporary
architecture andnaturalistic landscape works
partly because it heights the boldnessof the architecture and the architecture
strengthens the natural, Itstrengthens the naturalism,
but also people absolutely love tobe in this natural feeling space
(25:55):
in a contemporary context.
Nigel Michael, sounds like a good placeto stop. Thanks so much for joining us.
I mean, you've both had a greatinfluence on me over the past few years,
whether it's in my public work orwhether it's in my private garden,
Michael. But thankyou. Thank you for joining us.
Thank you. It's beengreat. Thank you so much.
(26:16):
I'm John Haselwood. You've beenlistening to an episode of Has Talks.
If you enjoyed this conversationand would like to hear more,
please subscribe and check out our otherepisodes. And thank you for listening.
I'm John Hazelwood. A landscapearchitect and this is Hassell talks,
a podcast series, exploringthe diverse perspectives,
open-minded collaborations and creativeinsights that we know will be the key to
navigating the increasingcomplexities of our world.
I'm exploring a world ofdynamic planting design,
diverse and beautiful plantingthat we engage with in our cities.
(00:23):
Planting that causesto stop, take a breath,
and connect with nature in our busy lives.
And luckily the obsession crosses intothe design work that I've been working on
and has introduced me to leadingproponents of a growing movement,
a movement with many names. It'snaturalistic planting or enhanced nature,
but the name doesn't really matter.
It all comes with a desire to improveurban environments to a connection to
(00:46):
nature. In this conversation,
I'm particularly interested in ouremotional connection to planting in our
cities. How does it affect usboth physically and emotionally?
Hasler have been working closelywith Professor Nigel Dunnett from the
University of Sheffield.
Nigel has been responsible for someof the UK's most spectacular planted
environments,
projects such as the Barb in London andthe Diamond Garden at Buckingham Palace,
(01:10):
and with his colleague James Hitchmough,
the planting designs for the LondonOlympic Park back in 2012. In addition,
he's recently published the bookNaturalistic Planting Design,
which I've got set right next to meso I can refer to that. Hi Nigel,
how are you?
Hi. Yeah, good, thank you.
Is there a point or a particular landscapeor a memory that's contributed to
(01:31):
you taking this particular journeyyou've taken in planting design?
Well I think it's difficultto pinpoint one particular
place. I think it's more of afeel a feeling
and I can remember it quitestrongly from when I was a teenager,
like an early teenager I guess,
of being out in places like a wonderfulwoodland with our spring wild flowers
(01:55):
like blue bells or inthe middle of a meadow.
And I can remember distinctlyfeeling of being part of
something bigger, but also hugelyuplifting and joyful feelings.
I remember when we met you you'djust come back from California,
I think it was the super bloom. I meanthey're obviously not quiet moments.
That's
(02:18):
That's true. But.
Almost event, isn't it?
It's an event where whole mountainranges change colour and you can see them
from hundreds of miles away,but when you get up close,
it's full of detail and full offascination. I think you are an actor,
you know are participantand you are part of it.
And you're not just an observerwith a low energy approach.
(02:41):
You are high energy participant.
And I think what struck me about thesuper bloom and other similar things
is the hundreds of thousands ofpeople who quite clearly have the same
experience. And it's not justan experience, it's a need.
I think it's a fundamentalneed to have this joyful,
(03:02):
uplifting, natural experience.
I was wondering if I could play devil'sadvocate and suggest that all planting
should be approached from an ecologicalperspective and not the emotional
or aesthetic concern. What doyou have to say to that
(03:23):
I would say that attitude hasbeen the biggest mistake in the
urban greening worldover the past 50 years at
least, where people have been puttingthese sorts of attitudes and it's still an
inherent approach within naturalisticplug to design and anything ecological.
(03:43):
I take the opposite view.
I say we should be working with thepeople first agenda that it should be all
about
engaging people and creating magicalexperiences and memorable experiences
and experiences people want to repeat.
And then of course,
you work ecologically and environmentallypositively and sustainably.
(04:11):
Speaking of emotionalresponses to planting,
last year I had the opportunity tovisit a garden near Melbourne. In fact,
Nigel, you were withme. It was late March,
I think it was coming to the end of overthree months of sky high temperatures
and no rain since Christmas.
Yet this garden particularlyhad a profound effect on me.
It was full of interest, colour, texture,
(04:32):
and importantly felt of itsplace and of its environment.
The planting was the step gardenby our second guest, Michael McCoy.
Michael seems to live and breathe andwork gardens and plants. He's a writer,
a TV presenter, and of coursea garden designer. Hi Michael.
Hey John. Hey Nigel.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Well Michael, I'm gonna startwith the same question as Nigel.
(04:55):
Is there a particular personalmemory or personal landscape
that's taking you on this journey?
There's look,
there's lots and there'ssome really obvious ones with
some time that I spent at Great Dixterin England up nearly 30 years ago.
But what I do remember steppinginto this garden a back
(05:17):
kind of forgotten corner of thisgarden somewhere in Scotland.
But I just remember stepping into thissort of woodland space and kind of
gasping with
how engaged and gripped and perfectly and
magically surroundedthat I was by this space.
And I remember of going through my sensestrying to work out what is it that's
(05:41):
gripping me? What is exits something?
There was nothing of great visualor botanical interest there at all.
And really what I put it down to wasjust the way there was a perfect match
between me and the spacethat I was in dwelling.
And at that point it absolutelynailed for me that no
(06:02):
matter how decorative or ornamental orwonderful my planting is that ultimately
it is about the kind ofconversation between me physically and the spaces around
me, which is probablyalways going to elude my
total control and could possiblythank goodness for that.
You'll be asked to design all sorts ofdifferent gardens or even present them
(06:23):
whether they're formal orclipped or native or ese.
Even the work that I'm aware ofyours is that this loose term of
naturalistic and dynamic is that again,
is that because of that emotionalresponse or is it just how you've been
trained? Is it somethingspecific about that?
It is absolutely somethingspecific about that.
(06:44):
And I think the two things go back to onethat you've already touched on is that
the notion of the fleetingmoment that I've come become so
addicted to the idea that gardens are,
that one of their superpowers isto grab and harvest the joy in a
single moment.
And that we've made the mistake withpublic planting in the past of thinking
(07:07):
this needs to be as stable and asstatic as possible. And in fact,
what Nigel and James have beenlooking at for decades is planting
that does exactly the oppositeand that creates a series of
unforgettable moments. AndI love that idea of that.
If I don't go and look at this garden now,
(07:28):
I'm gonna miss something really important.
And I think to me it's exactly the samebetween listening to live music and
listening to it on a cd.
But there's also the sense for mepersonally as a gardener as a keen
home gardener is I don'twant to be fully in control.
I want there to be other forces atplay. I want this to be a partnership.
(07:48):
And so for me to be doing plantingthat starts to respond in its own way
and surprises me and delightsme is a really important part of
using kind of naturalism.
Nigel,
you kind of summed that up in one ofyour Instagram posts a few weeks ago,
I think it was you made the comment thatlast year you'd given it a Chelsea chop
(08:09):
and it didn't have anywhere near of thecharacter of this year where you've just
let everything do what it wants to do.
Exactly. I tried it, but it robbedthe plans of all personality. And
that's one of the really nice thingsabout this as well that you know,
always have the chance to learnand to try and to change. I mean,
(08:31):
I just pick up on what Michael wassaying there because one of my kind of
influences I guess was a guy calledRob Leopold who was one of the
leaders of the new perennialmovement in Holland.
And he came to this with theviewpoint of a poet and described
these things in poetic terms.
And one of the best metaphors thathe ever talked to me about was
(08:54):
thinking about these sort of plantings,
like a dance that the plants in the mix,
they're all dancing with each other andthey're ebbing and flowing and they're
all kind of, some are goingup, some down in and out,
and it's not just at one particularmoment from year to year to year,
and it's all about cycles.
I think that that is one of the reallygreat challenges of this is kind of
(09:17):
this planting is getting tothe place of a command of your
grammar and your syntaxin terms of plants and the
way they respond and the way they ebband flow through the seasons in order
to then start writing poetry with them.
We have to always rememberwhy are we doing this?
(09:39):
And of course there arevery sound, ecological,
environmental reasons for doing it,
but the human reasonsare equally important.
And I think it's interesting,particularly in the last few months,
how so much new realism isbeing put on the health and the
wellbeing aspects of green.
(09:59):
Who do you think sums that up best? What
weapons,
arrows can we have in our quiver againstthose that would try and force it down
the line of ecological purity?
Somebody I admire a lot and who I workwith a lot is Sarah Price who brings the
sensitivity of a fine artist to
(10:22):
this understanding ofhow natural systems work.
Gardens.
Apparently they make up 20 to 40% ofthe surface area of most world cities.
I they're just as important to acity's ecology is as well to some
extent more so than someof the public planting.
Do you think there's lessonsfrom the world of the garden that
(10:48):
should be listened to in theworld of public planting?
Most certainly. I think that
what people like Nigel andJames are demonstrating to us
time and time again isthat the best solutions
the elegance of the solutionsthat we're hunting for is
(11:11):
not found in a kind of simplisticworld and that we have in so
many ways in the past gone forthe most bulletproof static
planting thinking that was the solution.
When Christopher Lloyd was here in 1992,
he's the only gardener who's ever beenasked to speak to the Canberra Press Club
(11:34):
and he'd visited the new Parliament House
the day before.
So he said to the NationalPress Club obviously the
landscape architect involved new fourplants and managed to use all four of them
in his design,
(11:56):
The point being that oursolutions have been simplistic
so far, whereas to get to a placeof genuinely beautifully elegant,
simple solutions that's gonna be on theother side of a huge amount of knowledge
and a huge amount of research.
One of our guy called ChrisPackham, a really well known tv,
(12:17):
TV naturalist in the UKtweeted a little movie a
month ago of one of my pictorialmeadows in a little Scottish town on a
roundabout in the middle ofa traffic island in the city.
And he says something like really gentle,
isn't this beautiful? Shouldn'tall cities aspire to this?
(12:38):
People love it. It's a reallyproductive use of the space.
And he just had this barof negativity saying,
this has no value to wildlife,this is just gardening.
And it made me think thissense of gardening as a
derogatory term is something that kindof belittles something because you're
(13:02):
doing something that gives pleasure orthat it's for the visual as much as for
anything else, it's notseen as valid. And again,
it's something I've come across a lotthat if you are making something that
claims to be ecological but you're doingit primarily for the visual senses,
the aesthetic and for the enjoyment,
then somehow it can't be working,
(13:22):
it can't be doing its job becauseit's all about aesthetics and it's
part of a puritan streak. Wehave that unless it's hurting,
unless it causes pain,
it can't really be the achieving itsendpoint and it is causing pleasure,
then somehow that's pleasureand function can't go
(13:42):
together. So again, this iswhy the mindset needs to shift.
Is the root of the question reallywhether or not we recognise ourselves as
humans as being a part ofnature or set apart from nature.
Is that fundamentally whereit comes down to that?
Because we assume we're somehow outsideof nature that our interactions with
(14:02):
nature are essentially destructiveand essentially invalid? Is that,
is that the assumption thatthese people are applying?
Well, I think it is,
and I think the most ironic thing aboutall of this is that certainly in the
European context,
most of our most diverse and beautifuland valuable semi-natural habitats,
(14:25):
let's say meadows are totallyartificial. Of course they are.
They're the result ofagricultural management and now they had to be maintained
through nature conservationtechniques. So in effect,
some of our most valuablehabitats are gardened,
but that people wouldn't recognise thatas gardening. And the bigger picture,
(14:45):
it's gardening. You'remanipulating a natural system.
And I know in your book you talked aboutor you suggested that how we respond
to nature in our cities is sort ofinnately tied to an evolutionary history.
I suppose one of the most striking thingsthat I I've seen is when I've been in
China exploring beautiful hay meadows,
(15:07):
which are kind of remnantsthere and fast disappearing.
But I remember very distinctlybeing in a big valley
and little fragments of hay meadowsin a largely improved just green
agricultural landscape of pastureand just seeing where the local,
(15:27):
for want of a better termpeasant farmers were going
and groups of women with theirchildren at lunch times or whatever,
big landscapes full of fields.
But it was just amazing howeverybody congregated on a tiny
patch of remnant meadow and the childrenwere running through the flowers and
(15:48):
the women were sitting aroundthe edge and everything.
And these are people who clearlyhave not had a university education
or have their own wonderfulkind of private gardens.
And yet of all the placeswithin this wide expansive
choice,
this is the one place that they were allgoing to. When we make gardens and we
(16:11):
do the sort of work we do andwe kind of unlock these feelings
in people, it's anincredible thing, isn't it,
to think that throughmanipulation of space and the
way we arrange space andplants within that space,
we have the power to reach deep,
(16:31):
deep into side people's is and release
these powerful emotionswhich are in there.
They're instinctive and a lot of theproblems we have mentally and socially are
because we are in an unnaturalplace most of the time.
So I do think it's
(16:51):
the gardens and plants at onesense seem such a simple thing,
but when you really delve into it, it's,it's a profound thing that we can do.
And when you perceive that froman architectural as an architect,
the talk about controlling people'semotional response within a building has
been long established.
(17:13):
And of course what we are dealingwith in that case is it every element
is perfectly in control itperfectly in man's control and
perfectly in control of thecreator of that building.
And whereas the moment you starttalking about landscape architecture or
gardening and you're talk andall of those emotive responses,
(17:36):
you've got to have such a loose holdon this because that there's such a
beautiful humility associate that youmust carry with it because you just know
that you can't control every aspect of.
It. In our professional world,
in landscape architecture andgarden design with clients,
I guess you kind of producesomething which is static.
(17:56):
And of course in the widersustainability argument,
we then have to put so much energy,
literally energy into maintainingthese natural systems in
a static form when now when everythingthey're trying to do is to break out from
that and it's a hugelyunsustainable way of working.
So we need to kind of liberatenatural systems to behave
(18:21):
much more like they would forreal with our guidance rather than
trying to put them in cages,
which is largely what we do in ourpublic landscapes and keep them
under captivity.
I have been really movedand challenged by reading
twice in quick successionIsabella trees book wilding
(18:44):
about the wilding of netand net castle in Sussex.
I really love in there is thatunderstanding the disruption and
disturbance has proven itself to bea critical part of the maintenance of
biomass, mean, sorry, biodiversity.
And that a lot of Floreshas suffered from the
(19:09):
loss of the mega fauna 40,
50,000 years ago that used to pulldown trees and make a great big mess
in certain zones and then you would getall the opportunistic species flowing
in, et cetera.
So there's this incrediblydynamic mosaic of biodiversity in
Australia. We have thisenormous sense of remorse.
We carry this huge sense of remorseof the damage that we have caused and
(19:33):
continue to cause and therefore havethis kind of restoration mentality
about attempting to try and torestore things to back to the
way they were and minimise the amountof disruption and disturbance to that.
And yet it really seems likehistorically and going back maybe tens
of thousands of years,constant disturbance was an absolute critical part of it.
(19:57):
And certainly within the whole thingof the burning of the burning of the
forest by pre-European settlement here,we have some understanding of that.
But before any human set put on Australia,
there would have beenthis constant disturbance.
It's never ever a static stable system.
That ecology has alwaysbeen a state of war, really.
(20:22):
but we still have a romantic view ofwhat's natural and what isn't natural.
And that romantic view takes usback to the agricultural landscape
of preindustrial times and that's the
romantic view of what nature is beautifully mets and then that's pinned to
(20:42):
particular plant communitiesthat we have to kind of restore.
When James and I did madethe Olympic Park in London,
which was Europe's largest newurban park at the time on a
Postindustrial site,
completely contaminated in themiddle of the city surrounded by
heavy industry
(21:04):
we had to argue that this was asite for people and not a nature
restoration site for restoration ecology.
And the ironic thing aboutthat is that in the uk,
the sale of wildflowerseeds, native wildfire,
meadow seeds peaked in 2013 andit was a direct response to people
seeing the designed meadowsin the Olympic Park.
(21:28):
Is there a link between that emotionalresponse that you've talked about?
Is there a direct link to measures thatare of interest to our clients and the
developers and the investors?Is there increased footfall?
Is there increased dwell time?And in the case the highline,
is there increase in propertyprices and rental values?
I think it's really important topic and
(21:51):
it's one that's a bit distasteful tostart talking about money and economics in
these terms.
But I think this is where there is thatdirect connection between the emotional
response and then more tangible measures.
And the reason it's becoming reallyinteresting is for exactly what you said,
that I guess what I would like to seeis this transformational infiltration of
beautiful green into our cities.
(22:13):
How do we do that if it's notin a prestige project where
everybody's going that same direction,
there's loads of money and fundingand political will and so on.
But certainly people I speakto on projects that I'm either involved in or when
people wanna get meinvolved, they say, Well,
you can make the arguments and say howwonderful it is for flooding or urban
(22:35):
cooling or biodiversity or forhuman wellbeing and health,
but that doesn't really mean very muchto us who had to invest in a place or who
have to take the risk of puttinga lot of that into green.
So I think one of the things thatwe really need to move onto is
generating evidence thatde-risks investment in
(22:57):
transformational greening.
And part of that is kind of the workthat James and I do to develop techniques
that make it kind of failsafe or reasonably fail safe.
But I think the other part of it is togenerate evidence for direct measures
that have some sort of economicbenefit as well as human benefit.
Well, I wonder again, Michael,
(23:18):
is there something we can learnfrom the world of the garden?
Gardening and gardenersare the only place where
these discussions can be drawn from
in the future. Certainlyin Australia so far,
the discussion is somuch in its infancy here,
(23:38):
and so I am very aware of howcompletely powerless I would feel
to defend its potential economic benefits.
I'm just so pleased that Hassell etal have
made a commitment to start exploringthis idea in public spaces in Australia
because it is really in its infancy.
(23:59):
Yeah, one of the big projects I'vebeen involved with is called Rather
Unimaginatively, the GreaterGreen Project in Sheffield,
which is a massive street greening scheme,
bringing dynamic plantingright into the city centre.
And despite the images that you mighthave that everywhere in Sheffield is full
of this sort of stuff it'sstill very new for us.
(24:21):
And our public planting and ourgarden planting is very traditional.
And I was really concerned ina way that bringing this wild,
wild skate into the urbancore would be seen as
not appropriate. So we've done quitea lot of people surveys as well,
and one of the questions I asked,I've done this through students,
is does this type of planting fit well
(24:46):
with the surroundings? I thinkjust off the top of my head,
I've got the figures, something88% of people said yes it does.
I then come around to think,well then essentially,
what is it about this kind of planting,
this naturalistic planting that tugson my heartstrings in a unique way?
And for me,
I feel like it isprimarily a deep sense of
(25:11):
its ephemerality of passing moments.
And I also feel like there is thatthing of a sense that nature has got
a strong hand here and that I can onlyimagine that it would be a great sense of
relief for people in citiesto kind of think, Oh,
I can really see nature startingto have a bit of a playground.
Here. I really do think you've hit on it.
(25:33):
I think all of our experiences thatactually to fit best with contemporary
architecture andnaturalistic landscape works
partly because it heights the boldnessof the architecture and the architecture
strengthens the natural, Itstrengthens the naturalism,
but also people absolutely love tobe in this natural feeling space
(25:55):
in a contemporary context.
Nigel Michael, sounds like a good placeto stop. Thanks so much for joining us.
I mean, you've both had a greatinfluence on me over the past few years,
whether it's in my public work orwhether it's in my private garden,
Michael
Thank you. It's beengreat. Thank you so much.
(26:16):
I'm John Haselwood. You've beenlistening to an episode of Has Talks.
If you enjoyed this conversationand would like to hear more,
please subscribe and check out our otherepisodes. And thank you for listening.
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