Local exponents lifting the profile of landscape architecture
One of the many interesting aspects of listening to academic landscape theorist Tim Waterman speak at the 2025 NZILA Firth Wānanga was hearing him talk about himself as a ‘landscape journalist’.
While in New Zealand Tim gave an airing of his journalism output, as featured in the likes of ASLA’s Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM), through the memorable and entertaining public talks he delivered in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland under the title of ‘Nine Beautiful Landscapes and One Ugly One: A Landscape Critic in Europe’. Tim’s journalist tag is also backed up by the anthology of his extensive writing published as The Landscape of Utopia by Routledge in 2022, a cornucopia of essays and critiques.
As a point of contrast, LAA brought to light the publication of Christchurch writer and landscape architect Matt Vance’s book Innerland earlier this year as an example of a local voice writing about landscape architecture.
More recently we were pointed to Tony Milne, co-owner and co-director of RMM Landscape Architects, as another local exemplar of accessibly written ‘landscape journalism’.
Tony writes a very readable short column for the Christchurch-born magazine Abode - a sister to the popular Avenue magazine, with both emerging every two months from the publishing house of Twenty Seven Publishers Ltd.
Abode is positioned as a magazine “dedicated to providing renovators and new home builders with fresh new ideas, advice and up-to-the-minute product information”. Its promise to readers is to provide “a focus on design and architecture, interiors and landscape design”, complemented with “beautiful imagery”.
From the point of view of the magazines that you might see at everyday retailers like bookshops or supermarkets it’s in the same league as architecture-focusd titles HERE (five years old), HOME (first appearing as Building Today in 1936!) or internationally, Dwell.
“I am writing this…”
In liaison with Tony Milne, Abode editor Cassie Doherty has kindly given LAA a green light to do an ‘anthologising’ of brief quotable teasers as an entry point to Tony’s personality-infused columns since 2018 - all available online.
Front covers of recent editions of Abode. In the July/ August issue Tony Milne writes about time spent in Europe and ponders the permanence of stone. As you do when you’re a landscape architect.
Tony’s columns are of course part of a genre that is generally regarded as ephemeral and ‘of the moment’ and not necessarily meant to be presented as a collection - but definitely not what we have come to know as opinion pieces or thinkpieces or advertorial.
The fun element here is the freedom Tony has been given to create a tone attuned to that of neighbours leaning over their shared fence having a yarn, and LAA suggests his columns need to be read in that context as a mix of well-travelled wit and semi-disguised wisdom.
As an aside, between such comical writers as McPhail and Gadsby and Joe Bennett you have to wonder if there’s something in the water in Christchurch and Nelson that has influenced Tony’s writing style - complete with occasional notes of John Clark about it and, for people with long memories, some hints of the sitcom series The Good Life (with Richard Briers as Tom Good and Felicity Kendal as Barbara Good) from 1975-78.
Tony is doing a quietly understated service to raising a humanised understanding of landscape and landscape architecture for the general public - for many, perhaps, for the first time . Arguably too these add a small, much-needed corrective balance to the dominance of architectural swag and interiors.
Some of the many insights that Tony cleverly seeds his columns with - each with a light-handed, educative point to them - are cherrypicked below. All are accompanied by vibrant imagery.
Interaction and experience of landscape is personal; we respond differently and that is how it should be.
Overwhelmingly, health-related research reinforces that simply viewing certain types of nature and garden scenes significantly ameliorates stress within only five minutes or less. Viewing nature for longer periods not only helps patients to feel calmer, but can also foster improvement in clinical outcomes, such as reducing pain medication intake and shortening hospital stays. Unsurprisingly, studies also suggest that hospital gardens increase staff satisfaction.
… environmental health and culture are inextricably linked. Further, I suggest, Joni Mitchell recognised and sang about this 50 years ago, dismayed upon waking in Hawaii, drawing the curtains and gazing out over a parking lot. Paradise lost. An anthem ahead of its time, or not, the rest of us are only now realising.
… along with three colleagues from Rough Milne Mitchell and a handful of others, we were lucky enough to travel to the light festival Vivid Sydney as guests of Energylight and ERCO… By day we learned about the language of light. Ambient luminaires, grazing, lux and Kelvin(s). Before this trip, the only Kelvin I knew was our insurance broker. I now know Kelvin is a measure of the colour temperature of a particular light source. More importantly, research shows that the lower the Kelvin, spaces with warmer colour temperatures are perceived as safer places.
Our cities need to breathe. Green spaces and plants are pivotal for a strong heartbeat, essential and important contributors to the urban fabric and health of the city and its inhabitants. Laudably, many councils throughout Aotearoa are working on ‘greening’ our cities to help contend with climate change and future resilience to temperature change, restoring habitat along with providing for the general psychological and physical health of those that reside within.
However, greening isn’t just about parks, trees, street verges and medians. Building and clever site design play an important role, too. This will take a greater collective and creative commitment than currently being exhibited. Particularly so when providing for a greater density within the confines of some of our cities throughout Aotearoa, while at the same time providing a healthy and stimulating environment.
This will take a more enlightened model of how we approach housing across our cities, with a more concerted effort required to increase ‘greening’ and permeability of a site. A design strategy that not only benefits that site but the wider environs, creating a broader space for biodiversity.
The inner city may not be for everyone; spaces can be vacuous and unwelcoming too. But I do like the inner city: the vibrancy, the smells, sights and sounds excite me. So does the diurnal rhythm of the heart of the city. Shared spaces contribute to this.
I have spent the last month or so in resource management hearings giving evidence relating to views, changes in views resulting from changes in the landscape, visual effects and how these are perceived. Of course, we see things differently and appreciate elements within the landscape for a variety of reasons. Knowledge, experience and expectation lead us to react and respond to the things we see the way we do.
Our ability to google anything and everything means we live in a very accessible world. Remotely, we can visually and audibly connect with places and landscapes. No need to be there. But the experience of a place is so much more than sight and sound; it is smell, touch, taste and surprise too.
We endeavour to weave surprise, intrigue, and excitement into the landscapes we create. By doing so, we seek to heighten and elevate one’s sensory experience. The surprise of the unexpected, the spontaneity of an encounter, the breeze felt on a cheek, an unexpected view gained, the energy and anticipation associated with movement, too.
Making a space, place, setting and experience memorable.
Some 20 years ago, we were involved in the design of Nelson Hospital and I was considering our landscape design response. While the healing qualities of nature and its part in convalescence have been recognised for centuries, my knowledge was limited.
Thanks to John Clark, I did know, “If it weren’t for your gumboots, where would ya be? You’d be in the hospital or infirmary…”. Realising I needed a slightly stronger theoretical base; I was drawn to the writing of Clare Cooper Marcus and Roger Ulrich. Both explored the concept of nature as a catalyst for healing, for overall wellbeing and the therapeutic benefits of green space and gardens within hospital settings.
… Far too often, landscaping is viewed as merely decoration used to offset buildings. External spaces within hospitals need to be more than this. Gardens can promote relief from symptoms, stress reduction and an overall sense of wellbeing and hopefulness.
A tui in the city is a great story. It is these narratives we increasingly need to craft. Imagine the richness of the tale if our cities were more biodiverse. Further to that, and beyond a city’s physical health, it is the physiological and psychological responses of humans in nature that provide a compelling argument for maximising the human experience of nature in our urban environments. Imagine the look on neighbour Derek’s face when I suggest to him that our respective front lawns should make way for a small patch of urban forest. I will possibly emphasise that this will make for a more liveable and enjoyable neighbourhood.
When we think about the neighbourhoods we live in, privacy is sought and attained in several ways. Visual privacy typically relates to the interface between the public and private realm. Walls, fences, and planting whether they be permanent barriers or filters, allow individual control of our privacy and interaction.
Rather than a simple duality of privacy or no privacy, there is a spectrum of privacy needs. Interestingly, academics have distinguished up to seven types of privacy. One of these is known as ‘not neighbouring’ (i.e. avoiding contact with your neighbours). A good mate finds solace in this, and I understand that too.
Winter on the tools can be harsh. As if it was only yesterday, I recall a particularly grim day. While building a traffic island, tears rolled down my cheeks as I cut concrete pavers with a diamond blade saw. A constant stream of running water ensures the blade does not abrade too quickly. As the water fell from the cutting trough, it hit the ground shattering as ice. So cold, I am not sure why my tears were able to roll. If only I'd been dressed like an Inuit.
The traffic island on Rossall Street has experienced many seasons since, the concrete pavers cut, laid straight and true, frame two Gingko trees that continue to grow. They do so on a lean, as they reach towards the arc of the sun, seemingly remembering that winter’s day they were planted.
English filmmaker Sir Ridley Scott once said, “I’m a yarn teller. My job is to engage you as much as I can and as often as I can”.
As landscape architects, we have an excellent opportunity to play the storyteller, to develop a narrative, to engage, to educate and to create a meaningful design response. To enrich a design, it needs a story – a collective and inclusive story.
I am now reading How to Read Water – Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea. I know a riffle or two. I also now know that rivers do not run straight for more than ten times their own width, which means when you find one that does it has had human intervention. A fascinating read if a little dry, despite its title.
Water is one of the most fundamental elements of our natural and built landscape. Historically settlement has grown from the edge of water. For years in Christchurch the Avon River has flowed through our city, at times unnoticed. We are now re-engaging with our river, on many levels.
The sound of water ebbing, flowing, tumbling or cascading can positively affect your mood and environment. Water evokes a range of feelings when all of the senses are taken into account. In nature, water can be found in many forms and contexts. Water has qualities that change over time and in different light conditions and different weather conditions.
As we slide into summer we find ourselves engaging with water more … look into it and you’ll be surprised what it can tell you about the rhythm of nature.
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At your leisure you can also dip into: Change in the landscape | Seasonal change | The past informs the future | Winter landscape | Experiencing landscape the e-bike way | Summer, sun and water | A little bit of bush in the backyard | An ode to autumn | Sidle up to spring | Summer loving | Plugged in to outdoor living | Inside out | Is native the new green?