Past Talks

Almost from the outset FOLAR has - with generous permission from our speakers - recorded virtually all the talks we have held at symposia and online.There are currently over 130 recordings available under Past Talks and Specials. The Past Talks section covers topics ranging from the Festival Pleasure Gardens at Battersea Park, Susan Jellicoe’s photographs, The Open Spaces Society, working on Byker in Newcastle with Ralph Erskine to landscape designs that promote human health and well-being.

There are a number of talks that focus on women landscape designers, from Fanny Wilkinson, Marjory Lady Allen of Hurtwood, Brenda Colvin, and Sylvia Crowe in Bristol, to Elisabeth Beazley, Diana Armstrong Bell and other contemporary landscape architects in the can…

Our speakers include past presidents of the Landscape Institute - Brian Clouston, Hal Moggridge, Tim Gale; landscape academics - Ed Bennis, Jan Woudstra, Alan Powers, Luca Csepely-Knorr, Catharine Ward Thompson; historians - Elain Harwood, John Boughton, Katrina Navikas; practitioners – Annie Coombs; Neil Chapman, Jennette Emery-Wallis, Paul Rabbitts, Ian Baggott, young researchers – Joy Burgess, Sally Watson, Karen Fitzsimon and many more.

The Specials section includestalks celebrating the life and works of two of the Institute’s significant practitioners – Bran Clouston and Hal Moggridge; and a series of twenty one talks on the C20 designed landscapes that were added to the Historic England register in 2021.

So how can anybody find anything in all these recordings? The quickest way is to use the search box – type in a strong and simple key word linked with what you are searching for, eg play, Jellicoe, Sweden, and hopefully you will find something that is useful for you.

Brenda Colvin, Colvin & Moggridge and archival matters — FOLAR study day

Coinciding with the donation of the Brenda Colvin archive to the LI collection at The MERL, her practice partner Hal Moggridge talks about her life and work as a practising landscape architect, and equally significantly, about her role as one of the founders of the Institute of Landscape Architects in 1929.

Hal prepared a detailed list of each item in the donation, which makes the archivist’s work a hundred times easier. Accompanying his presentation, Caroline Gould deputy archivist at The MERL highlights some of the issues confronted by archivists, and landscape practices wishing to donate material. These talks were not recorded but there is a short summary included in the FOLAR newsletter of 2015 .

For a short report about this event please find more here. No recording was made of these talks, but we invited Hal to talk again on Brenda Colvin in January 2025 and this will be available later in 2025. For an introduction to the Brenda Colvin Collection at The MERL follow this link. A catalogue list of items in the Colvin archive is available here.

Speakers: Hal Moggridge and Caroline Gould
March 2015 at The MERL

CEGB Southern Project Group Offices, Squires Lane Brenda Colvin 1964 from Brenda Colvin Collection at The MERL AR COL_DO1_2_29_CEGB

Annabel Downs18 February 2025