THE Government has not yet implemented a national landscape strategy or policy - despite repeated calls by the landscape profession. According to a policy document issued by the pressure group, Landscape Alliance Ireland, the Government does not recognise the need for landscape architecture, unless it is part of other land use and sustainable development policies.
"The approach to date has been largely piecemeal, fragmented and reactive, resulting in a dissipation of energy, scarce resources and a gradual deterioration in the quality of our total landscape," believes Terry O'Regan, a Cork based horticulturist and landscape consultant, and founder of Landscape Alliance Ireland.
Landscape issues "sit between two stools": the Department of the Environment and the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht. Mr O'Regan organised the second annual National Landscape Forum this month in an attempt to reinforce political will to reclaim the responsibility for public space.
He does, however, commend the Government on its legislation protecting heritage or cultural landscapes. Most recently Bord Failte, An Taisce and the European Commission have embarked on a landscape planning project entitled "Scenic landscapes". The project examined how to protect inhabited scenic and cultural landscapes without recourse to legislation acquisition or payments, and established methods for a community based landscape protection strategy.
Government landscape policy should make provisions for heritage, horticulture, public art, transport (including motorways and street paving), and the inclusion of landscape issues, as the planning/design stages, in engineering and architectural projects. The "Floozy in the jacuzzi" on Dublin's O'Connell Street, for instance, may be a matter of personal taste. But the "slippery when wet" white tiling in Gratton Street's paving scheme is another, more practical, issue entirely. On the other hand, Dun Laoghaire's new ferry terminal, designed by Dublin based landscape architect Fergus McGarvey of Mitchell and Associates, is certainly one of the most recent successful pieces of civic design.
Motorway Trees
On the transport front, Mr O'Regan finds the prospect of following Britain's example "scary". The Government response has been to draw attention to the vast number of trees being planted along the motorways, which is more about the quantity rather than the quality of the landscape: "Due to the availability of European Union funds there is a very extensive programme of motorway and major road construction in progress, and the implementation of this programme would appear to repeat the errors make in Britain and elsewhere in imposing motorways on the landscape".
Much of Britain's transport policy, which now includes extensive motorway widening has been likened by many environmentalists to acts of civic vandalism. The ongoing construction of the Newbury bypass in Berkshire has led to emotional head on collisions between road workers and environmentalists, which is costing the British taxpayer millions of pounds in security and policing bills.
Landscape architecture world wide has long suffered from the misconception that it is a purely cosmetic exercise. This misconception is most evident in the widespread use of the word "landscaping", which is unofficially banned within the profession in, many countries. Unlike architecture, landscape architecture does not have figureheads such as controversial architect Sam Stephenson or Sir Richard Rogers in Britain.
Bad Publicity
The profession receives bad publicity when, for example, interpretative centres are improperly integrated into the landscape. This is partly due to the fact that, by its very nature, landscape architecture should have an element of invisibility whereas successful architectural projects can be bold and proud.
It is no coincidence, therefore, that the "Award of Excellence" in the first Irish Landscape Institute Awards last year went to Belfast based Burns Stewart Landscape Architects for its contribution to the design of an interpretative centre in Armagh. The adjudicators were particularly impressed by the sensitive site planning which discreetly settled the development into an historic landscape.
The Irish Landscape Institute pointedly remarked: "This is almost a self effacing project for the landscape architect, because it required that the building and its grounds should become almost inconspicuous. In other words, they were required to make the design disappear into the landscape's fields, trees and hedgerows." Thus, a successful landscape project need not necessarily be noticed to be enjoyed.
The lack of landscape policy at a Government level is indicative of the situation in the educational system; the European Foundation for Landscape Architecture recently made its first overseas visit to Ireland to advise University College Dublin on its landscape programmes: at present, there is no accredited course in landscape architecture in Ireland.