Jobs in London

Welcome to the Old World !  To further your design abilities, the first thing to do is expand and enhance your cultural references landscape library. Use your time there to visit places, both the ancient and the new.

First things first, learn the specifics of where you live : you’re at the best place in the world to get to know wth an english garden is. let’s call them the classics. Observe and practice what do they mean by mixed borders, Ha-ha. Take a break, have a tea, some pudding, talk with these old british garden owners ladies, then back to the field. Have you figured out who murdered the guy buried under the roses yet ?

England having been one of the ‘great’ colonial empires, get to know how it did translate on their lands. Visit the places where explorers brought back their plants, tried to adapt them, select them, tame them. Visit the old parks, castles and such. Don’t forget to pillage the library to read the related books. Start with the Lonely Planet, read the general pages (history, recommendations, health and stuff)

England having been on the forefront of world industrialization, visit the places where workers lived crammed in unhealthy brick rows. Then see the first experiments done by ‘liberal’ minds trying to correct these excesses by building differently, more humanely, by introducing parks, personal gardens or other public amenities.

Go back to visiting more parks from that era. Back to the library to read more books.

Now time to see what happened after WWII and the destruction of huge parts of the city. What has been planned, how what is rebuilt, what has been achieved ? What are these modernist bars doing there, to what extend have they been successful or not.  See how some schools or communities have built outdoor playgrounds.

Parks, books, visit the local urbanism agency, there should be plenty of info to explain how London evolved from there on. 

Finally, move on to the contemporary things, from restructuring of ‘the city’, to guerilla gardening, to transformation of old industrial estates. What is that green belt and the multipolar urban development plan we hear about ? There should regularly be exhibitions, conferences and public debates you can attend. Get yourself at the opening vernissage of some happenings. Get drunk. Next day, back to the field, have a bicycle ride on the new bike paths that spread kilometers miles all around. Get close to an architecture/landscape faculty, get yourself invited to the parties, have a few drinks, talk to the girls. That should keep you updated on what’s going on in the area.

Now, when summertime comes, enjoy it because it’s rather brief. Grab your camera and plant your tent up some hill nearby Stonehenge. If you’re lucky, you’ll solve the crop circles enigma, otherwise you’ll just have a blast visiting like everyone else. Go to local pub, have a kidney pie and a pint.

All this should be relatively inexpensive, and should keep you busy for the next couple of years or so. Now, after you’re done with the warming up, cross the channel and go to France to see the real thing…