{"id":4481,"date":"2022-01-18T18:01:58","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T17:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gardensillustrated.com\/?p=66464"},"modified":"2022-01-18T18:14:08","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T17:14:08","slug":"profile-lynne-marcus-society-of-garden-designers","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/rss_feed\/profile-lynne-marcus-society-of-garden-designers\/","title":{"rendered":"Profile: Lynne Marcus \u2013 Society of Garden Designers"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Katie Beale\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 18 January 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Like many members of the Society of Garden Designers (SGD), Lynne Marcus, who became chair of the society in September 2020, came to garden design as a career change. After a degree in politics and sociology she went into manpower planning and research and then moved to human resources, becoming director of HR for\u00a0a leading firm of accountants in the City of London.<\/p>\n

When she took a break to have her two children, she realised that she didn\u2019t want to return to corporate life. Having time to appreciate her garden for the first time, she turned her attention to plants and with a friend started up a company providing container gardens<\/a>, mainly for restaurants. Requests to do local front gardens followed and she was hooked. A correspondence course with Professor\u00a0David Stevens on the Principles of Garden Design gave her the confidence to start her own design studio in 2004, and has guided her approach to gardens ever since. \u201cIt always comes down to the absolute fundamentals of garden design, and that\u2019s what the SGD is about too. The starting point for me is the relationship between the building and the landscape (I use the word landscape broadly). All lines are always taken from the house \u2013 windows, doors, the corners of the house, you should always find a line to hang your design on. To me every line is important and it doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s rectilinear or curvilinear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today Lynne mainly designs city\u00a0gardens of different sizes and in\u00a0different situations, with some larger country gardens. \u201cI like the jigsaw of it all,\u201d she explains, \u201cthe challenge of it. Flat gardens are nice to do but levels<\/a> are really where it\u2019s all at, to me.\u201d She feels that designers often forget to credit their clients who are usually so open to suggestions. \u201cThey have a feeling of what they love but they don\u2019t have a clue how to get there. The clever bit of being a garden designer is listening closely and working out what it is that the client wants.\u201d<\/p>\n

PEOPLE WHO COVER THEIR BACK GARDENS IN PLASTIC SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>

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Lynne\u2019s clients will certainly be offered sustainable options for the various elements of the designs she proposes, as sustainability<\/a> is critical to all her work. There are the key issues, such as water usage and storage, low maintenance and \u2018right plant, right place\u2019 planting, and reduction of concrete and other non-permeable surfaces, but the issue that perhaps exercises her most is what she calls \u201cplastic lawn\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s disingenuous, she says, to call it turf. \u201cPeople who cover their back gardens in plastic should be ashamed of themselves,\u201d she says passionately. \u201cThey can\u2019t get a plastic bag in the shop but they\u2019re prepared to dig up 1,000 years of top soil and stick down a ghastly\u00a0base and cover the whole thing in plastic to make a no-go zone for anything that breathes or flies.\u201d She is pleased that the SGD no longer takes sponsorship from plastic lawn companies, and that the new specifications guide that the Society is preparing for its members will be state of the art, and include all the current sustainable alternatives.<\/p>\n

Lynne joined the SGD in 2010 but didn\u2019t become a registered member until 2016. \u201cI had a lull in work and took the bull by the horns to get the plans, drawings and documentation to go through adjudication.\u201d Four years later she was invited to become chair, her past experience on committees for education, training and recruitment no doubt influencing the Society\u2019s choice. As well as prioritising sustainability, she wants to see more young people\u00a0entering the industry. \u201cThere is a huge skills gap. We are working with the Landscape Institute on its Choose Landscape programme. It\u2019s a big issue and we need to join together on this to have impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a personal level, she has clearly been influencing her son Matthew, 30, who has for many years been photographing her gardens, and over the past year has accompanied her on consultations, worked with her on designs and helped with planting. \u201cHe can start with me,\u201d she says \u201cbut he already has his own design style and I hope that he follows his own path.\u201d<\/p>\n

Running her own business has meant that she has little time to look after the multi-level garden at her Arts and Crafts house in north London.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve done things simplistically, to keep it low maintenance. There\u2019s structure from evergreens \u2013 from Laurus nobilis<\/em>, herbs, lavender and parahebe close to the house and from Pittosporum tenuifolium <\/em>\u2018Golf Ball\u2019 throughout the garden \u2013 and a waterlily pond overhung with Betula pendula <\/em>\u2018Youngii\u2019 and Cercis canadensis <\/em>\u2018Forest Pansy\u2019 lower down. I also have a network of small, white roses, which twinkle as they start flowering in May and create a framework through which everything else weaves. Recently, I\u2019ve had my head down, working on a design and have only been looking at the garden from inside. The other day I took a break and walked down the garden to clear my head and I thought goodness, it\u2019s really quite nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

USEFUL INFORMATION<\/strong>\nFind out more about the SGD at sgd.org.uk<\/a>\nA two-day SGD symposium on looking to the past to inform the future from a sustainability and climate-change perspective will take place at Denmans Garden, West Sussex, on 10-11 June 2022.<\/p><\/body><\/html>\n

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By Katie Beale Published: Tuesday, 18 January 2022 at 12:00 am Like many members of the Society of Garden Designers (SGD), Lynne Marcus, who became chair of the society in September 2020, came to garden design as a career change. After a degree in politics and sociology she went into manpower planning and research and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":4482,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"5"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2022\/01\/profile-lynne-marcus-society-of-garden-designers.jpg",960,413,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2022\/01\/profile-lynne-marcus-society-of-garden-designers-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2022\/01\/profile-lynne-marcus-society-of-garden-designers-300x129.jpg",300,129,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2022\/01\/profile-lynne-marcus-society-of-garden-designers-768x330.jpg",768,330,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2022\/01\/profile-lynne-marcus-society-of-garden-designers.jpg",800,344,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2022\/01\/profile-lynne-marcus-society-of-garden-designers.jpg",960,413,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2022\/01\/profile-lynne-marcus-society-of-garden-designers.jpg",960,413,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Katie Beale Published: Tuesday, 18 January 2022 at 12:00 am Like many members of the Society of Garden Designers (SGD), Lynne Marcus, who became chair of the society in September 2020, came to garden design as a career change. After a degree in politics and sociology she went into manpower planning and research and…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/4481"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}