Professor James Hitchmough: ‘applying an ecological perspective to aid long term maintenance’
11 October 2011
“Now for something completely different as they say” opened Professor Hitchmough as he bounded to the stage brimming with energy and verve.
Professor Hitchmough described his work over the last 15 to 20 years as the challenge of trying to do something positive in an urban landscape with low aspirations, low levels of skill and poor funding. He said that we have a choice; “We can either live in urban landscapes that are just rubbish‐ a world of squalor and despair where quite often the best you can hope for is they pick up the dead dogs ‐ or you can try to do something positive.”
Professor Hitchmough’s research into vegetation has provided an optimistic alternative to the norm; “The only way I could see of doing something positive was to deal head‐on with the reality of low
levels of skill, training and aspiration. My work has been about finding ways of creating vegetation that’s rich and highly detailed but using pared down processes to their minimal essence.”
Professor Hitchmough told the audience that if one looked to nature conservation and how those spaces of semi‐natural vegetation are managed, then we can see we can “ produce eye‐candy but with a fraction of the skills or resources.”
Professor Hitchmough said he valued traditional craft skills but said they were ‘thin on the ground’, so we could either “sit in a bunker and wait for a better day, or invent new worlds”.
Sewing with seeds in situ, Professor Hitchmough creates colour‐rich naturalistic vegetation. He also works with planting too – in repeating patterns. He admitted to having a post‐modern bleak vision of the world where he needed “to guarantee” that the man in the street could appreciate it and say “that’s fantastic – that’s wonderful – if you have the hairy‐men on your side (referring to the
construction team in the Olympic Park) then you’ve almost won. “ He referred to this as a serious challenge and something that could only really be achieved by the use of “colour” and “vernacular
aesthetics” saying “there’s no point in inventing a world that you need to read the book before you can appreciate it”
Durability
The quest to make the vegetation long‐lasting is important to Professor Hitchmough, he professed to the audience; “I am a researcher as well as a practitioner and the vegetation I make isn’t just eye ‐ candy, it also has to be durable and has to persist so that hopefully it’ immortal.”
He demonstrated several gardens (including the prairie border at Wisley) that he’d planted up to ten years prior which were still performing, comparing them to ; “Cats, the West End show – immortal but with a different star performer every year.”
Plant choices ‐ The Rules
Investigating semi‐natural systems is a way that Professor Hitchmough seeks to find the ‘wow factor’.
He underlined how important it was to accept that there’s no difference between how wild vegetation and cultivated plants respond to ecological factors. “My work in particular has been about
trying to apply the ecological rules that govern what can be designed. There are rules beyond which you cannot go ‐ they circumscribe what is possible and what is sustainable. They’re universal, blind and don’t distinguish between wild and cultivated plants. There’s no difference between how they respond to ecological factors. In ecological terms cultivated and wild
plants are the same. “ This he said was a revelation and hugely important when looking at the arguments around ecology. He also
professed a similar interest in having native and non‐native plants together in urban places. He said that the current cultural
obsession with ‘natives’ was limiting. “For most people ‘less isn’t more’ ‘less is less’.”
He went on to say : “I deplore the current trend within the sustainability debate to create a simplistic world in which natives are good and aliens are bad. Increasingly local government seems to have bought into this, particularly planning departments. This position will neither maximise human cultural experience, nor paradoxically wildlife opportunities in cities. It’s not going to push the buttons for the man in street. Cultivated plants give us richness and meaning . I don’t want to sleep walk into a future that’ s not going to be rich for me or the man in the street.”
Professor Hitchmough went on to discuss mixing ‘aliens’ with ‘natives’ in order to proved unique ‘quirky urban systems’ rich in biodiversity. He said that the key argument against ‘aliens’, namely ‘invasion’ was flawed, saying that “most aren’t capable of being invasive – it’s a bit like the fear of communists in the 50s – if we turn our back on them they’ll take over. Most cultivated aliens aren’t sufficiently well‐fitted to be invasive.”
He went on to look at alien plants as providers of astoundingly good habitats for native invertebrates. He spoke of invertebrates as being opportunists, and ‘”generalists”. He remarked that ; “ Urban
gardens in Britain are fabulously rich places for invertebrates whether they’re full of aliens or non aliens – you can’t tell the difference.” He questioned why this hadn’t changed the policy for native‐ only. He concluded that it hadn’t swayed things because “preferring natives is like a belief in god – we’re talking about value systems here.”
Joining these ideas together, Professor Hitchmough discussed how they could be wrapped into practise and said: “I design for what’s in front of me and for what people want. On some sites I work
entirely native and wouldn’t do anything else and some sites I concentrate on the exotic, and on some I do both. The model I carry around in my head says – there are some land places where culture is the over‐riding idea and there are other places where ‘nature’ is the big drivers. Most of the world lies between this infinite range of possibilities so you need flexibility – you need fluidity to meet the needs of the world. You don’t need someone saying ‘it’s only native’ or ‘it’s only exotic’.”
Meadow Maintenance
Not fertilising things will apparently give you the best result for low maintenance. To maximise low maintenance in a sustainable world (in a world without resources) “ you must match the productivity
of the plant world with the productivity of the site.”
Employing the rules of ecology Professor Hitchmough says; “if I’m on a fertile site I’ll match it with fertile prairie plants – if you want maintenance free systems (like the Olympic Parks for example) you plant using sand. The dry meadows beneath the velodrome have been established on sand, it’s less fertile than anything you’ve
seen in your life – but by doing that, we’ve guaranteed that
they’ll be there and good in 50 years time. The future is clearly uncertain, but nothing can invade this effectively because the nutrient levels are so low. If we used top soil it would look fantastic next year but in ten years time it will have gone with
weeds invading. “
Professor Hitchmough went on to describe some of things that were needed to achieve low maintenance, weed‐free colourful vegetation.
1. You have to start with weed free conditions and maintain it in first year. If you start weedy, you’ll end weedy.
2. We use a lot of sand. (Shock horror! Coming to a place near you soon!)
3. Use ‘density’ as a weed control. Density is something you can manipulate.
4. Mixed planting on a random basis. Use maintenance techniques to reset the clock (this only works when you design a community for all the plants to be treated in the same way on the same day.) All will be flash burned – it’s simple and do‐able by anyone. By doing this the maintenance costs will be about 4 hours per 100 square metres per annum.
“Both our research and practice suggests that it is possible to utilise ecological principles to facilitate long term maintenance. There is no magic in all of this. If you want to be sustainable in the true sense of the word then it does require discipline from the designers. You have to say ‘is this planting sufficiently well fitted to be useable – you have to engage with those sorts of ideas.
You have to use species which can be subjected to the same generic maintenance practice – those that can be burned! You also have to ensure there are sufficient resources available in the first year. If you get to the end of the first year weed free, then you’ve pretty much won.”
(James’s presentation is available via the Palmstead web site.)
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