Landscaping practitioners have been identified as essential in maintaining and enhancing the landscape as a whole.
Check Out: European Landscape Convention - ELC, High Weald AONB - Directors Blog,
There is a continuing plethora of scientific and academic literature from EU and UK sources identifying that land managers and practitioners have the key role in the preservation and future of landscapes. This is no new news and yet still the issues do not seem to be coming down through from governmental decisions based on
academic study and subsequent planning to the practitioner base.
Prior to the coalition government it was evident that the ‘Quango’ wall was the main reason that the majority of practitioners had little idea that they had been identified, (although probably well aware by their own logic) as
being the frontline in the preservation of our landscape and indeed our nation’s natural world. Many initiatives and other relevant material was simply hidden by this huge base of middle management.
The Quango cull is now fracturing this wall significantly. There were few quangos that were of real practical benefit to the practitioner yet many which claimed to be.
Comments by Paul Cowell, BALI with regards attendance of the Teeb conference by landscapers is a fair comment. But what about attendance to the numerous other conference’s on the subjects that can ultimately empower the practitioner and bolster the whole industry from its sustainable and traditional skills roots to its role as ‘THE sustainable industry’ as well as ensuring the practitioner is told and reminded of their identified importance.
The accreditation incumbents and others existing to assist in strengthening the profile of the landscape and horticultural industry are very guilty of a lack of and even of a general ignorance of this movement.
[In honesty though and maybe this was Paul Cowell’s argument, it is not up to existing accreditation organisations to fulfil this duty, indeed as detailed further below they can’t, and it is the role of the independent landscaping business however big or small to get involved. But if each major conference on any issue that has any relevance to the UK landscaping industry and there are many each month had a large percentage of UK landscapers attending it would create some wonder at the high salaries these landscapers must be earning and the quantity of free time they enjoy – both factors that rarely relate to any landscaping practitioner.]
Or is everyone waiting to see what profits can be gained from this movement. A potential new flow of money into the industry to preserve what it already by and largely does anyway. This cannot be allowed to happen and
in a time of necessary austerity measures and cuts it would be fateful to allow for a repetition of some of the situations that have occurred in recent years.
To illustrate this I can relate a true story with regards a region of England that was lucky to be given substantial grant from the EU to aid the region’s economy, including money allocated to the forest and woodland industry. This money was to help with grants to progress new and existing businesses in the industry. The percentage of this allocated sum paid in grants was small, most went into the salaries of those who worked for the regulating Quango and much of the remaining money went into website directories, network meetings etc. The websites no longer exist and were never high in the listings and the meetings were often poorly attended due to being scheduled at difficult times for any small business owner to attend - any weekday evening. A huge sum of money went into the salaries of the Quangos set up to govern the funds, resulting in a statistical rise of the worth of the industry of the region in question, resulting in the scheme being identified as a success.
It is clear that the Quango / NGO middle management cloud recognised that there was a need for networking and strong web presence. The reality is that they are unable to provide this. Any web based network cannot be
regulated from out with the industry, it has to be independent and it has to free to all and relate to all branches within the broad spectrum of land industry. Accreditation cannot help with this as it cannot be seen to be
exclusive. It is quite clear that there is only one such web resource that fulfils this criteria – The Landscape Juice Network.
Yet here is the paradox – many of those academics, scientists and even Quango representatives would not and could not sign up to the LJN, yet we know they watch the site, (after one blog about Quangos I had two emails from senior staff at a Nationwide Quango, saying that they would be in breach of their guidelines to sign up and comment). The onus is thus on LJN members themselves to glean the relevant information and publish it on. Is it thus necessary that the LJN members themselves form a working party where they can attend and report back from relevant conferences or would so much of what is talked about already be well established in the minds of the practitioner? (In some conferences, the frustration of listening to someone who is paid double what you earn, telling you how to practice, when you have been practising as such for several years can be somewhat trying). But as practitioners are the frontline of the landscape industry there may be some important advice that needs to be filtered down to us. Particularly in terms of sustainable good practice and that the role of the practitioner in helping to ensure that measures for water run - off management, good tree management and other issues that appear in the media regularly is in secure hands.
The most important step forward is that the practitioners themselves need to identify with the importance that is being hailed upon them. Self promotion is the key here and with a resource such as the LJN to fall back on, this is easily achieved. Sit back and wait for funding, forget it. Money will filter to practitioners on the ground by way of a growing respect and empowerment from clients who will be starting to identify with the importance of a skilled landscaping / land management practitioner as it filters out into the media over the next few years by way of the industry itself?
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