NZILA 50th: Alan Petrie remembers

By Alan Petrie

My introduction to the landscape architecture profession started in the late 1960s while I was studying design in Wellington. I boarded with Ian Galloway, the then Director of Parks and Reserves. He was extremely opportunistic and if he sighted a small, open, vacant site in the city he would sketch ideas on how it could be developed. I would then prepare a coloured rendering of his vision. This team effort resulted in several small parcels of land being acquired by the Wellington Council and eventually being created as pocket parks.

While working part time for the Wellington City Council in 1970 I had the opportunity to design a garden for the blind in Thorndon. Bordering the site for the garden was the Thorndon Motorway corridor and I was fortunate enough to strike up a working relationship with Helmut Einhorn, both a trained landscape architect and a town planner working for the Town Planning Division of the former MoW. Helmut was also a graduate of Berlin’s Bauhaus House, and I consider that school’s strong theories in brutalism in design is strongly reflected in the hard landscape detailing of the Thorndon motorway .

Portrait of Alan Petrie in Landscape Design Studio, 1971. Image credit - Lincoln University Living Heritage

While visiting Helmut's design office on several occasions, I was greatly impressed by the range of strategic planning that he was involved in, many of the areas that are today described as tourist hotspots. Projects included the traffic circulation of Mt Cook Village, Queenstown Mall and a development plan for Milford Sound. Helmut encouraged me to consider enrolling for the Diploma of Landscape Architecture (Dip LA) at what was then Lincoln College 1971.

As I remember it, in the early 1970s there was minimal interest in the course. In more specific terms, the intake for the course in 1971 was two, Vic Allen and myself, whilst the previous year there was only one student application, Bill McLeary. In comparison, the one year Certificate of Landscape Design was very popular, with the enrolment probably the maximum number that the course could cater for. A sepia rendered poster prepared by lecturer Frank Boffa must have sparked considerable interest in the Dip LA course, as in the following year, there was a four-fold enrolment.

Having entered the course on the design side of the profession, I was required to sit several papers in soil science, plant ecology and horticulture, the latter partly with Bob Crowder whose concepts in companion planting were well advanced for that time. I recollect, if working in the design studio in the evening, Arthur, a college cleaner with his family of cats, would inevitably visit you. Arthur would give you free and frank critique on your drawing; luckily he seemed to have access to an endless supply of Pentel erasers. His stories about the refectory's kitchen were truly gut wrenching, e.g. the dead rat and the bacon slicer.

Some of the fondest memories of the course were the field trips, not only of everyone squeezing into Charlie Challanger's Morris 1100, but the calibre of lecturers. One to stand out was Professor Kevin O’Connor's “reading the landscape” on Banks Peninsula, Kevin had such an astute appreciation of rural landscape patterns. Another field trip that I can recall that ended in confusion in landscape technique was to the Benmore Hydro Power Station where an accompanying Welsh landscape architect, Bodfan Gruffdd, thought the whole of the earth dam should be covered in ivy. George Malcolm was nearly speechless.

I was fortunate enough to work during the Christmas break for the Landscape Consulting Service alongside Tony Jackman (NZILA’s first president), Jane Taylor and Sally Mason. The project that I principally worked on was a master plan for Donovan Park on the margins of Invercargill, while Jane and Sally were undertaking a major study of future open space requirements for St Margaret’s College. Tony was preparing a comprehensive tree planting programme for Memorial Avenue using the underlying soil types for the selection of tree species. This was the era of Ian McHarg’s sieve planning process, which involves the layering of geology, soil, climate and vegetation data to form an integrated landscape plan. This planning process made an impression on the course at Lincoln and had an influence on my major design study, The Planning of Queen Elizabeth Coastal Park, Paekakariki.

Alan Petrie standing in front of restoration plantings at the Lake Te Anau control structure. The trees are silver beech and cabbage trees. Alan wrote about the 50th Anniversary of the Save Manapouri campaign for LAA last year.

Immediately after graduating, I started work for the former Department of Lands and Survey and was seconded to the Fiordland National Park Board, primarily to liaise with NZED on the restoration of disturbed areas associated with the Manapouri Hydro Power Scheme. This project work included the establishment of a locally sourced native plant nursery at Manapouri.

It is noteworthy to mention that landscape students who attended lectures by Charlie Challenger in sauna-like conditions in prefab 2, will recall that many of the examples of outstanding landscape design, illustrated by slides, were from when Charlie was studying for his Diploma in Landscape Design at Newcastle upon Tyne in the mid 1960s.

After graduating from Lincoln, many of Charlie’s disciples made the pilgrimage to the UK to visit many of the famous parks, gardens and new towns that he used to illustrate his lectures with. My own pilgrimage was in 1979, and while in England I travelled to Cambridge University to the IFLA World Congress that was being held in conjunction with the Landscape Institute’s Golden Jubilee Conference. If the venue of Kings College was not awe-inspiring enough, the line up of keynote speakers certainly was, including Geoffrey Jellicoe, Derek Lovejoy, Brenda Colvin, Clifford Tandy, Brian Hackett and the landscape guru herself Dame Sylva Crowe. I was joined by three other budding landscape architects, Peter Rough, Gordon Griffin and Mike Barthelmeh.

I recall for most of us rubbing shoulders with so many pioneers of the landscape profession was truly an indelible experience. Robin Gay was to present a paper entitled “The Coastline and its Importance to an Island Country”. Unfortunately Robin could not make it to Cambridge and in his place I presented a paper on the impact tourism was having on Milford Sound.

Alan is unable to attend the 50" anniversary conference in October as he will be helping to construct an Ellis Stones type of rock garden on the outskirts of Sydney. He has wished NZILA members all the best for the celebrations and for the future.