Landscape Architecture

The mild winters and abundant rainfall have made Greater Vancouver a gardeners’ paradise, and the lawns of even the most humble homes are enlivened by shrubbery, often a rhododendron or hydrangea bush.

Perhaps the forgiving climate, coupled with the early immigrants’ British disdain for showing off, hobbled the development of landscape architecture in these parts. Whatever the reason, landscaping got off to a shaky start in Vancouver.

The first practitioner was Thomas Mawson, a landscape architect and town planner from Lancashire, England. In 1911 Mawson set up shop on the top floor of the Rogers Building at 470 Granville. He’d come to Vancouver on a cross-Canada lecture tour, and Vancouver’s park commissioner immediately hired him to design the lighthouse and underground lifeboat house at Brockton Point.

Mawson also won the competition for developing Lost Lagoon, proposing a formal design of perimeter walkways around a scallop-edged body of water, with four colonnaded recreational buildings at the lagoon’s four corners. But the then-park superintendent ignored the plan, opting for a much cheaper, more natural layout. In 1915 Mawson closed his office and, although he returned to work in Banff, Calgary and Ottawa after World War I, he never came back to Vancouver.

Vancouver’s leafy and upscale Shaughnessy district, established around 1912 by the Canadian Pacific Railway for the city’s well-off families, was planned with the help of Frederick Law Olmsted, the American landscaper who designed Central Park in New York City and major civic parks in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston and Montreal.

In the twenties horticulturalist Frank Buck acted as adviser to the Municipality of Point Grey. Buck was responsible for landscaping the UBC campus, and oversaw the planting of the silver maples along University Boulevard in 1928.

Vancouver’s second professional landscaper was another Englishman, Desmond Muirhead. After graduating from UBC in plant pathology, Muirhead began a landscaping business in Kerrisdale. The firm’s work focused on landscape and garden planning for single family homes on 50- and 66-foot lots in Shaughnessy, Point Grey, the University Endowment Lands and West Vancouver’s British Properties. Clive Justice, who joined Muirhead’s firm in 1953, says that two prevailing modes had dominated landscaping in the fifties: “the �Seattle large-boulder rockery’ on all sloping sites, and �the pointed and spreading dwarf conifer up against the house foundation’ style.”

Muirhead introduced the notion of designs and blueprints to Vancouver. Early commissions included the McPhee residence on 49th Avenue near McKenzie, and the Clarence Saba garden between McKenzie and Cedarhurst. These gardens were designed to complement two of the earliest International style homes in Vancouver, by architect Douglas Simpson of Semmens and Simpson.

Most Vancouver-area gardens were heavily influenced by English styles (and to a lesser extent, German) mainly because the climate was similar. Information in British and German how-to books easily adapted to West Coast conditions.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, two firms—Justice & Webb and Tatersfield & Associates—- dominated landscape architecture in the region. Among projects completed by Justice & Webb were golf courses (Shaughnessy, Langara, VanDusen and North Richmond), as well as the restoration of Fort Langley. Clive Justice was also instrumental in interesting people in rhododendrons.

John Lantzius’ firm also played a major role, working with architects Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Massey on such projects as Simon Fraser University. Other Lantzius projects included the University of Victoria’s Gordon Head campus, housing on the former Langara golf course and massive expansion at UBC.

Landscaping ideas from California began to trickle north, notably the notion of “outdoor living,” promulgated by Bob Royston, who taught at the University of California at Berkeley. Sun-decks, planter boxes and private patios with high fence areas began to interrupt the broad swathes of lawn associated with 1950s suburban development.

Many of the landscaped open spaces in Vancouver’s downtown core stem from this period: the plaza at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, the plaza outside Eaton’s, and the landscaping around the Bentall buildings.

In the late sixties Art Cowie opened Ecos, the first Vancouver firm to emphasize interdisciplinary planning as a major component of landscape design. Cowie brought together practioners of a variety of fields to brainstorm major projects all over the province.

The next decade saw the development of Arbutus Village, one of Vancouver’s first major projects, which was to set a pattern for the future. From the beginning, the developer, the architects and the landscape architects worked together, creating a new role for the latter.

In the 1970s and 1980s Vancouver gradually established its own identity in landscape architecture. One of the key firms at this time was Don Vaughan & Associates, composed of Vaughan and three Americans—Jeff Philips, Ron Rule and Richard Pavelek. Their projects included Shaughnessy Place (with architects McCarter Nairne); Granville Island (with Hotson Bakker); Shannon Mews (with Erickson Massey); Tumbler Ridge town centre (with TBP Architects); Whistler Town Centre; and the network of urban plazas and fountains built in Vancouver.

Vaughan’s company also designed the Discovery Square SkyTrain Station on Burrard (with Alan Parker & Associates) and the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden in Chinatown (with Joe Wai).

The firm changed personnel over the years, with Philips, Rule and Pavelek going on to set up their own companies. Other well-known alumni of the firm are Kim Perry and Jane Durante.

In 1984, when asked to head a team to design the site for Expo 86, Vaughan brought together all his past associates and partners, as well as several others, to tackle the largest landscape project in Vancouver.

In the late 1970s and 1980s landscape architects in the Vancouver area began to rely extensively on native plant material. In earlier decades plant material had to be imported from Europe, but a few far-sighted horticulturalists were now growing salal, Oregon grape, ferns and other local greenery. The use of native plants had been most strongly developed by landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander and architect Arthur Erickson at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. Oberlander and Erickson’s interest in integrating landscape with buildings was emphasized again at Robson Square, where a profusion of trailing vines counterpoints the modernist slabs of concrete and glass. That the architect chose to create an urban oasis, rather than another dark tower, underscored Vancouver’s idea of itself as a city whose fame rests on its spectacular setting.

By the early nineties the role of the landscape architect had been recognized as an important element in urban design. In the megaprojects at Coal Harbour (Marathon Realty) and on False Creek’s north shore (Concord Pacific), landscape architects played an important role as members of the design team.

In 1994 and 1995 Vancouver’s planning department acknowledged the importance of the discipline when it commissioned landscape architects to draw up design guidelines for “green ways” and “linear parks,” to beautify transitional neighborhoods like Mount Pleasant and the Wall Street area.

Planting trees and shrubs and creating pocket parks is now viewed as one way to humanize the urban jungle, making streets safer by encouraging more pedestrians and enhancing neighborhood pride.