The Hampshire County Council’s Landscape Strategy team was established to enable schools to develop their grounds as vital spaces for teaching and learning, play, recreation and the immediate contact with the natural environment. The team developed the whole site planning process which has informed the Learning through Landscapes philosophy now taken forward on a national basis by the charity ‘Learning through Landscapes’ (LTL).
The work of the team has developed not only to provide schools with the context for physical environmental change but in many cases has been a catalyst within schools for their development of teaching practices and school leadership. This is where the role of the landscape architect had added the most value.
The role of the landscape architect here is to engage the full range of school stakeholders in the process for planning for positive change. The whole site planning process draws on the contribution of the pupils, school leadership team, teaching and support staff, governors, parents, community representatives and a range of County Council officers.
Through briefings, workshops or special projects such as the award winning Big Landscape eXperiment, schools can test, explore and evolve ideas to imagine a different future prior to decisions about investment. At the same time every stage of the process leads the school towards a comprehensive strategy to complement their unique landscape setting and community context.
In most cases the involvement of the team with a school has led to the development of a landscape strategy which provides the context for fund raising for sustained improvements over a number of years. Schools are then supported in the design and implementation of physical projects by landscape architects within the wider Landscape group. Over the past 10 years projects with the cumulative value of over £2.0 million have developed directly from the initial involvement of the Landscape Strategy team. This is investment in the Hampshire school estate and a contribution to the local economy that otherwise would not have happened.
The significance to the school clients is best demonstrated by the track record. The Landscape Strategy team’s expertise in whole site strategy is now being used across parts of Hampshire County Council, eg Country Parks and within Property Services. The public in the form of governors, parents and visitors are enthused and engaged in the process of positive change which in many cases will also have enormous environmental benefits. Through the process of whole site planning the vital role that these green spaces have in providing green infrastructure and actively reducing carbon emissions is highlighted and increasingly valued.
