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.

2 Brenda Colvin CBE PPILA

This talk explores the life and works of Brenda Colvin (1897-1981), beginning with her childhood in India and her early garden design practice (1922–39), an activity she continued throughout her career. As a thoughtful theorist of landscape, the talk is interspersed with brief quotations from her writings. By 1951 she was elected President of the Institute of Landscape Architects of which she was one of the founder members, becoming the first woman to lead a British design or environmental profession.

From the late 1940s, Brenda shared an office and staff with fellow landscape architect Sylvia Crowe, although they maintained separate practices. The talk illustrates how they, alongside other colleagues, helped broaden the scope of the landscape profession in the latter half of the twentieth century. Independent in both thought and practice, Brenda worked on a range of government-sponsored projects, including major schemes for the Central Electricity Generating Board, a Water Authority, a military town, and a new university. Committed to continuity, she established the foundations for the perpetuation of her practice and its ideas.

HAL MOGGRIDGE was introduced to Brenda Colvin by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, in whose office he had worked after qualifying as an architect. He then became a landscape architect, and in 1969 entered into partnership with Brenda who had retired her practice to the Cotswolds. They worked together harmoniously, and their landscape architectural practice, Colvin & Moggridge, continued after Brenda’s death in 1981 with Chris Carter joining as partner; and still thrives, now under new directors. Between 1969 and 2005 Colvin & Moggridge handled 1,430 commissions, varying between large long-term rural industrial landscapes, reservoirs, cement works, quarries, a waste ash hill, and new parks and gardens including consultancy to the Inner London Royal Parks and creation of the new National Botanic Garden of Wales.

Hal Moggridge was elected president of the Landscape Institute in 1979. He has represented the Institute on the International Federation of Landscape Architects, was a commissioner of the Royal Fine Art Commission, served on the National Trust’s Architectural Panel, and on ICOMOS Cultural Landscapes Committees. He has explained the practice’s approach in an illustrated book: Slow Growth – on the art of landscape architecture. He has been awarded the OBE in 1986, the RHS Victoria Medal of Honour in 1999 and the Landscape Institute Medal.

MORE INFORMATION

Brenda Colvin collection is at The MERL https://merl.reading.ac.uk/collections/brenda-colvin/

A hand list of the main Brenda Colvin collection is available here https://merl.reading.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/07/AR-COL_catalogue_2023.pdf

Trish Gibson biography- 'Brenda Colvin a Career in Landscape' (2011)

Celebration of Hal Moggridge's career in Landscape Architecture https://youtu.be/W1Zzeeil3-w

Trish Gibson's talk https://youtu.be/H6cdwEx10Sw

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

Speaker Hal Moggridge

15 January 2025

Annabel DownsComment