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.

Pioneering Women in Landscape Architecture - Brenda Colvin, Susan Jellicoe and Diana Armstrong Bell

FOLAR presented three talks to students of landscape architecture and related disciplines at Kingston University about some of the design work and contributions made by women. Two of the women were operating within the newly founded Institute of Landscape Architects. The third woman was present in person to talk about and show her work as a present-day example of a practising landscape architect.

Many will have seen Susan Jellicoe’s photos in old landscape journals, as illustrations in a book, or Susan and Geoffrey Jellicoe’s Landscape of Man. Susan took photos wherever she and Geoffrey travelled – in UK and overseas. Sally Ingram talked about her own research into Susan’s photographic collection and what that tells us about her, the times she lived and work by her contemporaries as well as her husband. Hal Moggridge talked on Brenda Colvin and the phenomenal range of projects she tackled, and from where she got her drive and self-belief. She was also one of the founder members of the Institute of Landscape Architects. Today, amongst the many pioneering women in landscape we invited Diana Armstrong Bell to talk about her philosophy and ethos and some of the ground-breaking work she has done in the UK and overseas.

We are an unusual profession in that we appear to be nearly fifty-fifty male/female, and from the earliest of days, but Robert Holden through the facts and figures, demonstrated that women have a lot more pioneering to do to be truly equal at all levels of working life in landscape architecture.

This event is the first of a series on women in landscape architecture and was chaired by Karen Fitzsimon.

Speakers: Sally Ingram, Hal Moggridge, Diana Armstrong Bell and Robert Holden, Chair Karen Fitzsimon
October 2019, Department of Architecture and Landscape, Kingston University
[This event was not recorded]

Annabel Downs19 February 2025