Brenda Colvin was a historical landscape architect, born in India 1897. In 1919 Colvin went Swanley Horticultural College, Kent, England to study market work and landscaping, during her first year she became highly intrigued in the design study under Madeline Agar, a qualified landscape architect trained in the USA then working on the renovation of Wimbledon Common; she worked for two years as a student and supervisor in Madeline Agar office. Then in about 1922 Colvin decided to create her own business. For the next two decades she advised on the creation and improvement of gardens, both private and institutional, writing many articles on design with plants, a field in which she excelled.
The few remaining black and white photographs of her early work show an architectural handling of texture and form in foliage design combined with a delicate overlay …show more content…
The macadam atmosphere of the barracks was slowly converted into a community in a woodland setting. This was achieved by perceiving that on the thin Bagshot gravels two fundamentally different types of landscape were needed. Trim grass with well-spaced trees provided military precision as a foil to naturally regenerating woodland in fenced enclosures. So effectively was nature called in to assist design that the original budget was halved in the face of inflation without loss of content? Aldershot was also given a new park: by extracting gravel an ornamental lake was created; behind this a long hill was built of urban rubbish and covered with the gravel. The project cost less than removing the rubbish. However, Colvin's tetchy capacity for effective tactlessness was illustrated at Aldershot, when she criticized the brigadier in command, in front of aghast subordinates, for allowing her planting to be poorly