Valuing Place: What We Forgot and What We Can Relearn

July 2025

When we lived in smaller, tribal societies, our relationship with place was personal. The land was not just where we were — it was who we were. Forests, rivers, clearings, coastlines — these weren’t just backdrops, they were woven into stories, rituals, and identity. In that kind of world, taking care of a place wasn’t a policy or a plan. It was survival, belonging, respect.

We didn’t have to ask, “how do we value place?” We just did. Because we were part of it.

Most tribal and Indigenous cultures understood this through lived practice. Places were used, yes — for food, for shelter, for gathering — but they were rarely taken for granted. Seasons taught rhythm. Movement taught patience. Materials were used because they were available, and in return people gave something back: through restraint, through ceremony, through care.

Of course, not every tribal society lived in perfect harmony with nature. There were mistakes, overuses, and collapses. But the underlying systems — small scale, feedback from nature, and a culture of reciprocity — made it much more likely that places were valued, respected, and allowed to continue.

Fast forward to today, and that connection feels broken. We still care. We still know how to look after things. But we’ve been removed from our role as caretakers of the places we live in. Our environments are managed by distant systems, often invisible to us. The result? A disconnect. We walk through spaces that don’t ask anything of us — and don’t give much in return.

And yet, the need to value place hasn’t gone away. In fact, it might be more important than ever.

Because places that can change, offer something useful, and stay simple tend to create lasting value. And when something is valued, people take care of it. They use it. They feel part of it. That’s the shift we need — not just better designed spaces, but places we actually care about.

Maybe the solution isn’t to try and control everything. Maybe it’s to build places that invite people back in. That make us feel like we belong. That let us rediscover the role we once had: not just as users of space, but as part of it.

Because in the end, value is key to creating a successful place, space, or environment.

Is Landscape Architecture a Delusion?
July 2023

The idea of landscape architecture being a kind of delusion first came to me when I was a student. I was drawing grand ideas based on whatever concept I found interesting at the time, layering meaning, narrative, and visuals into designs that looked great on paper but were not always rooted in the real world. That is part of learning of course, and I still believe in the value of making mistakes. But looking back, I realise how easy it is to get caught in the illusion of control, thinking that we can or should design perfect solutions.

Over time I have come to see design differently. Nothing is forever. Mistakes are not just part of the process, they should be embedded into the design itself. That means creating frameworks that can adapt, evolve, and absorb change. If a landscape is too fixed, too dependent on everything going to plan, it becomes brittle. And when things inevitably shift, socially, environmentally, or economically, you end up spending a lot of money trying to fix something that was not built to bend in the first place.

I am more interested now in designing places that can stretch and shift. Places that do something useful, serve people, and do not pretend to have all the answers from day one. This blog is a space where I will explore those ideas. Simple, productive, adaptable landscapes that are less about controlling nature and more about being within it.

The unknown
August 2023

I’ve been thinking a lot about the systems we work in as landscape architects. When I was studying, it all felt exciting. Coming up with ideas, drawing visions, pulling from all sorts of things. But over time I started questioning it. Why are we designing like this. What are we actually changing.

Reading Deleuze and Guattari shifted something for me. Their idea of the machine really hit. It’s not just about machines in the mechanical sense. It’s this whole system we’re part of. Nature, people, economics, emotion, power. It’s all connected, always moving. We’re not designing in isolation. We’re part of this huge web, whether we admit it or not.

That’s what made me realise that a lot of what we call innovation in landscape architecture is just repetition. It fits nicely into the system. It looks green, it sounds progressive, but it often doesn’t ask deeper questions. We talk about resilience but build everything to be fixed. We talk about nature but still try to control it.

But people aren’t fixed. Nature isn’t either. We adapt. We change. We find ways to survive and grow, even in uncertain conditions. That’s something I think landscape architecture can really support—if we let it.

The unknown isn’t something to avoid. It’s something to work with. Letting spaces evolve. Leaving things open. Being okay with not knowing all the answers. That doesn’t mean we stop designing. It means we design in a way that invites change. That responds to people’s lives. That’s flexible enough to shift with the climate, with communities, with time.

This ties into what I’ve written before about the delusion of control. The idea that we can fix landscapes in place and expect them to stay relevant. But the more we try to control everything, the more we risk creating spaces that don’t work. That’s why I think we need to move towards something softer, more open, more honest.

That’s where I see the future of landscape architecture. Not in grand visions, but in spaces that support well-being in real, grounded ways. Places that grow with people. That feel alive. That help us feel connected to where we are and who we’re with.

It’s not about having the perfect solution. It’s about creating the right conditions for good things to happen. And I think that’s a pretty hopeful way to approach design.

Soil

September 2024

Lately I have been thinking a lot about soil. It keeps coming up. Not in a planned way, just something I keep noticing in projects, in conversations, in how we build.

Soil gets overlooked. Scraped off, boxed in, replaced. We talk about planting trees and greening cities, but a lot of the time we are working on damaged ground. We forget that soil is not just a material. It is alive. It holds water, memory, connection. Everything starts from it.

In most projects, soil is treated like a background layer. Something to shift around to make the design work. But the more I pay attention, the more I think it is the design. Or at least the place to start from. If we ignore it, we are already off track.

I think we need to build lighter. Use fewer foundations. Leave the ground more intact. There are ways to do that. Raised structures. Shallow systems. Screw piles. These are not always standard practice, but they are not difficult either. And they help keep the soil alive.

Sustainability starts here. Not with bold planting or tech driven solutions, but with protecting what is already there. Soil holds the potential for everything else. Food. Shade. Biodiversity. Resilience. We damage it, and all of that becomes harder.

I am not saying we stop building. But I do think we need to ask more often what we are building on. And whether the ground will still be able to breathe when we are done.

No foundations
October 2024

Rewilding comes up a lot. It is often talked about as a solution. A way to restore balance. A way to heal what was lost. But I think we need to look at it differently. Not as something to go back to, but something to move through. My own work is grounded in simplicity, productivity, and the balance between foundations and no foundations. That lens has shaped how I see rewilding and where it sits within the future of landscape architecture.

A lot of rewilding starts from the idea that nature and people are separate. That there was once a perfect natural state and now we have to bring it back. But that split between nature and human does not make sense anymore. Everything is connected. Ecology, economy, culture, climate. We cannot undo that.

The methods used in rewilding are not small. Species are reintroduced. Rivers are reshaped. Land use is changed. These are human interventions, not natural processes. They are based on a vision of what a wild landscape should look like. But whose vision is that. And does it still fit with what the land needs now.

You can see this tension in projects like Yellowstone in the United States, where wolves were reintroduced in the 1990s. It is often held up as a success, and in many ways it is. But it was also a top-down decision that affected ranchers and local communities in ways that were not always considered. It shows what happens when ecological goals are set without fully addressing social context.

In the UK, the Knepp Estate is another well-known example. There, the owners shifted from traditional farming to a rewilding approach that allows animals to roam and landscapes to change on their own. It has brought back biodiversity and sparked public interest, but it is also privately owned land with financial backing and tourism potential. It is not a model that fits everywhere. And it raises questions about access, ownership, and who benefits.

I think we need to stop looking back and start working with what is in front of us. Real simplicity is not about erasing what has happened. It is about working with it. Rewilding, if it is going to stay useful, has to let go of nostalgia. It needs to focus on supporting change rather than recreating an ideal.

It also needs to support people. Land needs to be productive. That does not mean it cannot be wild or biodiverse. It means it should feed people, hold water, offer shelter, or give space to breathe. When rewilding becomes about removing people to restore a certain look, it starts to echo older patterns. It can feel like modern enclosure. We have seen this before and we know who it benefits.

For me, the question is not whether we intervene, but how we do it. Heavy foundations might get a project started, but they can also fix it in place. And that makes it hard to respond to change. I try to design with the least amount of foundation needed. Just enough to support growth. But always with space to shift.

Rewilding could work the same way. It could help start a process, then step back. Not to return to what was, but to allow something new to take shape. Something that can live in the world we are in now. A world shaped by climate change, urban spread, and the need for balance between people and place.

We are not outside nature. We are in it. That means the landscapes we create need to reflect that. Not just in how they look, but in how they work. Less control. More listening. Fewer fixed ideas. More space for adaptation.

Rewilding is not the end point. It is part of the process. It opens a door. What matters now is what we do with it.

Guidance and growth
November 2024

Lately I have been thinking about how we work with land in the same way we raise children. That might sound like a strange comparison, but it keeps coming back to me. We talk about letting landscapes return to a wild state, or stepping back to let nature take over. But what does that really mean. And is that the right way to care for something.

If you raise a child by controlling everything, you risk limiting them. They become shaped by your fears, your goals, your rules. But if you remove all structure and let them do whatever they want, they can drift. They might struggle to find direction or safety. The key is in the balance. You give them just enough structure to feel held, and just enough freedom to grow into themselves. You guide without forcing. You support without controlling.

I think the same is true for landscapes. Especially when we talk about rewilding. The idea of stepping back completely can sound appealing, but the reality is never that simple. Every place has a history. A climate. Pressures from people, plants, animals, water, weather. Letting a place grow wild does not mean doing nothing. It means understanding what kind of support it needs to thrive.

Sometimes that means small interventions. Sometimes it means leaving things alone. The hard part is knowing when to act and when to wait. There is no perfect answer. You have to pay attention and keep learning. Like parenting, it is ongoing work. It changes as things change.

That is why I do not see rewilding as a fixed approach. It is not a template or a goal. It is a relationship. It is a way of listening to land and responding to it without overpowering it. That takes time. It takes humility. It means letting go of the need to get everything right.

The landscapes we design should not be controlled systems or abandoned experiments. They should be places where life can unfold. Places with room for mistakes, growth, and change. If we get the balance right, the land becomes something more than a product. It becomes part of a shared future.