Melbourne Landscape Conference

All week I kept wondering how I can write a post about this experience. Over the weekend I spent about 14 hours raptly listening to highly creative landscape architects and garden designers from all over the world. They talked about their ideas, their sources of inspiration and how they work.

It was the Australian Landscape Conference. The theme was Design with Nature: Reconnecting People and Place. It was a big investment for me time and money wise, but it was worth it.

Most of the speakers talked about creating environments for humans that incorporate flora and fauna in an integrated way that relates to the broader landscape - the specific cultural, historical and physical contexts of a place.

The speakers are all highly influential people at the cutting edge of developing contemporary landscapes that take into account the challenges and opportunities the human species faces today and in the future. They are radical in their ideas and practice, questioning the role and meaning of the built environment and its relationship with the natural environment.

Here are a few of the visual highlights, taken from the Conference brochure.

Professor Cassian Schmidt, from Germany, combines perennials and grasses in myriad ways, to replicate natural plant habitats. He is exploring a formulaic planting scheme to help people cope with the challenge of using ever changing perennials.

Bernard Trainor, originally from Melbourne, now lives and works in California. He creates gardens that  perfectly reflect their setting.  He learned about California's native plants, rocks, soil, topography, architecture and history to design gardens that belong in their specific place.

Dr Kate Cullity, leading Australian landscape architect, founding partner in TLC, designed (among other things) the magnificent Australian Garden, shown in a post in this blog.  She sees herself as poetically interpreting the landscape. The above photos show a private garden and a fernery.

Dr Noel Kingsbury, British garden designer and prolific writer, promotes a naturalistic approach to planting design.

Andy Sturgeon, award winning British garden designer, has completed projects around the world, public and private. He is passionate about design - not only gardens, but furniture, set design and architecture. He believes we have a lot to learn from history, and that the best materials in contemporary gardens are natural traditional materials like stone, concrete and timber.

Miguel Urquijo is Spanish. He has developed gardens to be sustainable in a Mediteranean climate with dry, hot summers. Even in summer a garden needs to be beautiful, he believes. To achieve this, shrubs dominate, and perennials play only a small role.

I took this on board in relation to my amateur garden, that tends to look pathetic in summer!

Outstanding major projects by Kathryn Gustafson, North American landscape architect, can be seen globally.  She sees herself as sculpting the landscape. She works closely with architects and other disciplines -  designers, botanists, horticulturalists and engineers.

The above photo is part of the design of the National Botanic Gardens of Wales. Light and shadow is an important part of the design.

Sam Cox is not an international figure like the other speakers. He is very influential locally. He works in  Melbourne and its surrounds, and is passionate about the Australian bush. He is involved in both the design and construction of his projects. His naturalistic designs include natural looking swimming that merge seamlessly with the wider environment.

I haven't done justice to the many and varied achievements of these landscape people. Consider this to be a brief appetizer. If you want to continue the meal, just follow the links.