8 weekly online talks, Fridays @ 10.30 starting January 15th, £5 each or all 8 for £36.

This ticket is for the entire course of 8 sessions or you may purchase a ticket for individual sessions via the links below. To see more details of each individual speaker please click on the links below.

Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

The Gardens Trust is committed to promoting the recognition and conservation of Twentieth Century designed landscapes, many of which are little understood or appreciated. Last summer, amid all the gloom, we were very pleased that 24 important post-war designed landscapes, or elements of, were protected by being added to the National Heritage List for England (NHLE). This came about as a direct result of our 2017 joint symposium with the Garden Museum “Mid to late C20 Designed Landscapes: Overlooked, undervalued and at risk?”, the associated Compiling the Record Campaign, and our subsequent partnership with Historic England for the Modern Gardens and Landscapes Project.

We are therefore delighted to present this aptly timed series of 8 lectures to further expand our knowledge and understanding of post-war designed landscapes. These will be delivered by a range of specialist, expert landscape architects all of whom have been involved in various aspects of post-war heritage landscapes. Starting with an overview of the period, including a review of how Compiling the Record was so successful in generating the phenomenal number of new designations, each lecture will consider a different landscape typology as follows: infrastructure and the extractive industries (power stations, reservoirs etc); parks and civic spaces; business parks, corporate headquarters and factory landscapes; cemeteries, crematoria and memorial gardens; public and private housing; public and private gardens, and finally landscapes of the vast number of post-war universities.

The fully-illustrated lectures will explore a range of significant and unique projects that the landscape profession undertook in England from 1946 to the early 1990s - projects that effectively reflected the development of post-war society. Many of these ubiquitous landscapes are poorly understood and increasingly under threat of loss through alteration redevelopment and even demolition. The lectures will consider both the sites recently added to the NHLE and ones that perhaps should be in the future and which may be under threat. Significance and vulnerabilities will be addressed along with examples of good practice in restoring and, reimagining sites for a viable C21 life. Gaps in our knowledge will be highlighted and onward research opportunities suggested. We’re especially keen to identify significant sites that are currently too ‘young’ to be designated but which are of a quality for potential in the future.

Lecture 1: Friday 15th January: England’s post-war designed landscapes: rediscovered and revalued – an overview. Karen Fitzsimon CMLI

Lecture 2: Friday 22nd January: ‘The Public Relation Value’ – landscapes of infrastructure in post-war England. Dr. Luca Csepely-Knorr

Lecture 3: Friday 29th January: The 21st century value of English post-war parks and civic spaces. Oliver Rock CMLI

Lecture 4: Friday 5th February: The business of the commercial designed landscape in post-war England. Karen Fitzsimon CMLI

Lecture 5: Friday 12th February: Death and post-war designed landscapes. Annabel Downs CMLI

Lecture 6: Friday 19th February: ‘An Abundance of Green and Open Spaces’ housing landscapes in the post-war period. Dr. Luca Csepely-Knorr with Karen Fitzsimon CMLI

Lecture 7: Friday 26th February: Post-war gardens: structure and the pretties, their recognition and care. Deborah Evans CMLI, IHBC

Lecture 8: Friday 5th March: Late 20th century English university landscapes. Hal Moggridge OBE VMH PPLI RIBA FIHort

image credit: Harlow Town Park by Dame Sylvia Crowe with Sir Fredrick Gibberd 1949-53 © Historic England Archive