Seeds of Change – Planting Design for the 21st Century
In a world where climate change is increasingly a reality in our lives, our gardens should
be a haven for biodiversity and a refuge from the world, not only for ourselves but for the
rest of the wildlife with whom we share the earth. It is something we all aspire to, but
the reality can be somewhat different. Every plant we plant produces plastic waste in the
form of pots and labels, our composts may contain peat, and the plants we choose may
have travelled long distances bringing with them the risk of introducing alien pests and
diseases. The issue of maintenance may influence us towards increased use of hard
landscaping rather than wildlife-friendly alternatives.
Trying to be greener isn’t easy and it leaves us with many questions: Has the prevalence of pot grown plants influenced our entire approach to planting design? Are there other ways to plant or perhaps sow a garden that would produce a more self-sustaining plant community attractive to wildlife? And when planted how do we maintain that garden without the use of pesticides and herbicides? Is the maintenance of a wilder more biodiverse garden more difficult? Does nature herself have the answers? Our speakers this year will help us to explore these questions and will address some of the challenges. They will share with us the knowledge gleaned through years of research, experimenting and working with plants, seed mixes and plant combinations. Cassian Schmidt (Germany), Sandro Cafolla (Ireland), Nigel Dunnett (UK) and Sarah Price (UK) all work at the cutting edge of planting design and they will share with us their insights into new approaches to resilient and biodiverse planting for the 21stCentury.
Date: Saturday 29 February 2020
Venue: Crowne Plaza Hotel Conference Centre, Northwood Park, Santry, Dublin 9
Title: “Seeds of Change: Planting Design for the 21st Century”
Speakers: Nigel Dunnett, Cassian Schmidt, Sandro Cafolla and Sarah Price
Tickets: GLDA Full Members, Pre-Reg & Friends €95, non-member & Friend membership €145, non-member €120, non-member Early Bird offer €110 (available until 14 Jan 2020),
Students €55 (includes membership for the year), group of non-members (min 10) €110 pp.
Tickets available to purchase on www.GLDA.ie.
CASSIAN SCHMIDT (Germany)
As Director of Hermannshof Gardens in Germany, Professor Cassian Schmidt is a leading
expert in planting design, using natural plant communities as inspiration for sustainable,
low maintenance, cost-effective plant combinations. With a landscape architecture
degree, a Master’s in horticulture, and more than 25 years’ experience as a professional
plantsman, Cassian Schmidt is at the forefront of the New German and Dutch Wave
movement.
Hermannshof has been a public garden for 30 years now and all of the planting in the
garden is an experiment, and thus always changing, exploring and pushing boundaries. It
showcases everything from annual beds to perennials and grasses and other structural
plants that offer a naturalistic look, changing seasons of interest and beautiful colour
combinations. The planting style changes rapidly as you move through the garden to
demonstrate various styles or habitats.
Cassian has developed eight different garden habitats at Hermannshof, varying from sunny
and dry to shady and dry, to damp and so on. In creating combinations, he uses plants
from the same geographical zones in order to achieve cohesion and uses natural
communities and how they grow together as his inspiration. His goal is that the planting will self-manage for up to a decade. Ultimately his research aims to produce plant
combinations that are sustainable, low maintenance and beautiful.
www.sichtungsgarten-hermannshof.de
NIGEL DUNNETT UK
Nigel Dunnett is Professor of Planting Design and Urban Horticulture in the Department of
Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield, and is one of the world’s leading
voices on innovative approaches to planting design. He is a plantsman, designer and
pioneer of the new ecological approach to planting gardens and public spaces. His work
revolves around the integration of ecology and horticulture to achieve low-input, high impact landscapes that are dynamic, diverse, and tuned to nature.
Nigel’s work is based on decades of detailed experimental research, and widespread
application in practice: he works as a designer and consultant and regularly collaborates
with a wide range of other professions, and his work has been widely applied in the UK
and abroad.
A primary objective of Nigel’s work has been to move the consideration of planting design
and landscape horticulture from a largely cosmetic, decorative and functional role, to one
that is also central to the discussion of how to address the major problems of climate
change and a sustainable future. And, while ecological ideas in landscape design have
often been applied at the larger scale, his focus is at both the large scale and at the
smaller scale: gardens, urban parks, on and around buildings (podium landscapes), and in
high-density built development, applying ecological concepts within horticulture,
landscape architecture and garden design.
The emphasis is on simple maintenance, and a careful consideration of the various layers
within a planting, and successional flowering of a planting over a long period. The key
element is an understanding of the ‘horticultural ecology’ of designed plantings, and
working with ‘plant communities’ that are suited to site conditions, and which mimic the
processes in ‘natural’ vegetation.
Nigel has authored and co-authored many key books on planting design, water-sensitive
design, and urban rainwater management. The most recent, published last year, is
Naturalistic Planting Design The Essential Guide (Filbert Press). He is a Chelsea Flower
Show Gold medal designer and Greening Grey Britain Ambassador. He is a regular lecturer
to audiences throughout the world.
Nigel’s projects include: The Queen Elizabeth London Olympic Park, where he and James
Hitchmough were the principal planting design and horticultural consultants. The Barbican
Centre, London that featured innovative planting schemes for podium landscapes, and
netted Nigel the 2018 Landscape Institute Fellows Prize for Most Outstanding Project, and
Landscape Institute Award 2018 for Planting Design, Public Horticulture and Strategic
Ecology. He worked on the Sheffield Grey to Green Project with planting designs for the
UK’s largest retrofit inner-city greenway with sustainable drainage and rain gardens.
www.nigeldunnett.com
SANDRO CAFOLLA (Ireland)
Sandro Cafolla is the founder and energy behind Design By Nature based in Carlow,
Ireland. With more than 30 years experience, Sandro is considered Ireland’s foremost
expert on wildflower seeds and the creation of wildflower meadows, and his website
Irishwildflowers.ie is a virtual cornucopia of information on the subject. He is passionate
about using native wildflower seeds and plugs to support and protect local wildlife and to
create more climate-resilient landscapes.
Sandro is a self-taught environmental designer with a life-long interest in horticulture.
Starting at the age of 19 he has built up a business increasingly directed at biodiversity
and organic wildlife gardening. Finding it difficult to source native seeds and plants for his
projects, he started gathering and supplying them himself and Design By Nature was born.
His expertise in how to sow and maintain wildflower meadows makes him the go-to person
in Ireland for local authorities, landscape designers, landscape contractors and the private
sector.
He has advised on and supplied native species for myriad projects from motorways to
green roofs, from award-winning Chelsea gardens to ‘Bloom’ gardens, from Golf courses to
landfill, and from eco-parks to sites of scientific importance.
www.wildflowers.ie
SARAH PRICE (UK)
Sarah Price has rapidly established herself as one of the most prominent and sought-after
garden designers in Britain. Drawing on a prior training in fine art and a life-long love of
wild and natural environments, her gardens have an immersive quality and are often
described as ‘painterly’.
Her practice is unusual for its breadth and scope of work. Sarah co-designed the 2012
Great British Garden at London’s Olympic Park and was a planting consultant for LDA
Design on the post-Games legacy design. Price continues to work on a number of large
public planting schemes as well as private projects. These include new community gardens
and an exciting ‘play’ landscape designed in collaboration with MUMA for Cambridge
University; an “Art Garden” at Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery sponsored by Jo Malone
London; and a garden inspired by the New Forest for a new Maggies Centre in
Southhampton designed by architects AL A.
Price’s designs have collected numerous awards, most notably Gold Medals at the RHS
Chelsea Flower Show in 2018 for her M&G Investments Garden and in 2012 for The
Telegraph Garden. Sarah is a contributing editor for Gardens Illustrated and also writes for
House and Garden and The Telegraph. In 2016 Sarah was awarded Garden Columnist of
year by the Garden Media Guild for her monthly series on landscape design.
Sarah is a visiting lecturer in planting design at the Department of Landscape at Sheffield
University and has lectured at the New York Botanical Gardens, Kew Gardens, the Royal
Academy, and The Royal Geographical Society in London. She graduated with a First class BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University in 2002 and from 2002 – 2003 worked for a year as a full-time gardener at Hampton Court Palace, London.
www.sarahpricelandscapes.com
