The last unexplored bastions of garden history may lie in the brave, new, mid-20th century world left by World War II. It’s easy to assume that post-war urban and industrial landscaping was unglamorous work, a mere add-on to factories, new towns, mines and power stations, alongside reservoirs, national parks, hospitals and red-brick universities, and, of course, some of it was. Many postwar architects seem to have considered outside spaces a necessary evil where landscaping got in the way of their buildings’ clean, modern lines.
Brenda Colvin was at the forefront of a group that found such spaces an honour to design. She welcomed opportunities to work with both architecture and nature, to create something that was always more than the sum of its parts. Her profound understanding of plants, nature…
