The Landscape Institute is delighted to be an official partner and supporter of the Housing Design Awards 2026. Landscape has always been a vital element of successful housing development. Creating housing that works for people, place and nature requires a landscape-led, landscape-first approach. This ensures that housing development makes best use of the existing landscape and natural systems and is designed and managed to support people’s wellbeing, community cohesion and climate resilience, and restore nature.

By giving support, the LI is ensuring that this is formally recognised in the Awards. In addition, we are supporting a special category (jointly with the RHS) focused on the quality of public realm and private gardens. This is a huge opportunity to highlight the power of landscape-led development.. LI President Carolin Göhler FLI will be on the judging panel for the Awards.

The Awards were launched by Nye Bevan in 1948, in the same sitting of Parliament as the NHS, to identify the best ideas among councils’ post-war rebuild. They were then opened up to market sale homes in 1960 by Harold Macmillan.

For decades entry to the awards has been made in a detailed but standardised format, including key facts such as tenure mix and parking allocation. This is the backbone of the Award’s detailed database, long relied upon by government departments and agencies.

Entries close on 10 March.