FOLAR
Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading

Women In Landscape

20C Women in Landscape Design

Although perhaps uniquely the profession of landscape architecture has enjoyed an equal balance of male and female members, the lives, work and records of women members, however, has been less equally represented. FOLAR's ongoing talk series, some, like this one, with the Gardens Trust, has endeavoured to correct this imbalance. This particular group of six - Susan Jellicoe, Sheila Haywood, Brenda Colvin, Mary Mitchell, Marjory Allen and Marian Thompson - comprise some of the earliest pioneers in the profession who contributed to the expertise, development and awareness of the landscape profession in many different ways. It also includes two women from later generations, invariably inspired by the work of earlier designers, and their contemporaries, and who went on to lay down their own paths. We will never run out of valuable candidates for this ongoing series of talks.

The speakers we invited to share their knowledge about these remarkable women - Sally Ingram, Paula Laycock, Hal Moggridge, Joy Burgess, Wendy Titman and Bruce Thompson - have each known, worked with or researched into one of these six women.

4 Mary Mitchell - life and landscapes

Mary Mitchell (1923–1988) has been in the shadows of the history of our profession - even though she remains one of only four women landscape architects with an ODNB entry. Trying to find to find sufficient research material to build up a picture of Mary Mitchell's life and works has proved challenging, but from incomplete threads, surviving examples of work, and still on the look-out for those who knew her directly, or indirectly,

Joy Burgess presents a fuller picture of Mary Mitchell; how she became a landscape architect, her most important period of work with Birmingham City Architects Dept creating landscapes of play, and more. Via the work with the Land Army, and subsequent horticultural work and study at RHS Wisley and East of Scotland College of Agriculture she discovered landscape architecture. She gained a diploma in landscape design at UCL and went to work briefly with Richard Sudell before joining Ann Sutton (Swanley trained) in South Africa.

On her return to the UK she worked at Stevenage New Town, and then as a qualified landscape architect she set up the first landscape department within Birmingham City Architects Department and where AG Sheppard Fidler as the city architect had identified the need for the role of a landscape designer. Play and playable sculpture (working with John Bridgeman) became an early focus for Mitchell in association with the city's housebuilding programme. Also from the outset, it is clear that Mary Mitchell is interested in the work and ideas on play by Marjory Allen.

JOY BURGESS is a lecturer in landscape studies at the University of Liverpool where she is currently carrying out her PhD in collaboration with Historic England. Her PhD looks to tell the histories of female landscape architects in post-war Britain. Joy also works on the editorial team for the Women’s History Network Journal and has recently been a research assistant alongside Professor Luca Csepely-Knorr on the AHRC projects - IFLA 75: Uncovering hidden histories in Landscape Architecture and Women of the Welfare Landscape

MORE INFORMATION

Contact The MERL for additional information on and by Mary Mitchell in the Institute Journals, membership files etc. merl@reading.ac.uk or telephone +44 (0) 118 378 8660

The Landscape Institute collection at MERL: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/collections/landscape-institute/

More information about FOLAR and joining: https://www.folar.uk

Speaker: Joy Burgess

29 January 2025

Annabel DownsComment