INTERVIEW
RRR: Who do you think has an interesting
approach to planting design?
DY: I really like the work that Andrew Green [regional
technical director at RPS Australia Asia Pacific] has
done over a number of years – it’s an approach I think
I’ve subconsciously referenced in my own work. I was
interested in his work while I was studying, and a
lecture he gave once about his experiences working
with Lawrie Smith [renowned for designing public
gardens in Queensland] really resonated with me,
especially the ideas about how to subtly vary form and
texture across a large palette.
Internationally, Gilles Clément – in terms of
textural arrangement and the vernacular way of plant-
ing and compiling a palette. He has a wonderful way
of saying, “Well, it doesn’t matter if something gets
trodden on,” and if somehow the project self-curates
in that fashion, I think there’s a lot of value in that.
It’s difficult to balance the idea of temporality or
seasonality, though, because that’s all time-based,
and what I mean by that is that it’s sometimes
difficult to reconcile the perception of a “finished”
landscape with the reality of how that landscape
presents itself in the everyday.
RRR: What common characteristics of residential
garden design, particularly in Brisbane, would you
most like to challenge?
DY: An appreciation of landscape as an evolving
entity is missing from the general discourse. But more
importantly, there’s a standardized response to the
residential garden that might be planting a hedge or
screening trees along the boundaries and turfing the
remainder, which I just don’t subscribe to. There’s
such value in that space on so many levels – it’s kind
of obscene to give it so little regard, when it’s really
quite a simple site-planning exercise to determine the
most appropriate approach.
PO: My generation and the generations before me
grew up with lots of land, in smaller houses with
larger lot sizes. But recently there’s been a shift toward
larger homes and smaller lots, and so that outdoor
space has been compartmentalized. This lends itself
to the idea of building boundaries, but still trying to
maintain some vestige of a backyard.
DY: And there’s typically a negotiation of this idea of
the backyard and what the client functionally wants
from it, as it often can’t happen because the planning
is wrong. They’re generally looking for something that
can’t easily exist anymore.
RRR: Have your clients generally been open to
having their minds changed?
PO: It’s a bit easier to do at the moment because of
peoples’ general sensibilities. If this was the 80s we’d
be battling against people wanting resort landscapes.
The other thing to try and achieve, which we can’t
really do without Dan’s help, is stitching a project with
the larger suburban landscape, which is something
I always want to try to do.RRR: When your practices are built on residential
work and your contributions are always in private
space, do you ever feel a desire to effect change on
more of an urban scale?
PO: Yes, but I like having a direct and immediate
influence on our city, too. The cumulative effect of a
lot of small commissions seen on a map shows that
this kind of fine-grain work may have some influence
on the city. I think this could apply even more with
landscapes than with buildings.
DY: By the end of my studies I was pushing toward
broader-scale strategic planning and representation
and theory-based practice. My switch to almost
entirely residential practice was really a response to
what is happening in Brisbane. It was kind of a post-
GFC decision as much as anything, with a side effect
being the rediscovery of a love for plants that didn’t
ever disappear, but kind of just got pushed aside.
PO: We live in a distinctly suburban country. We tend
to ignore this fact a lot, at least in design discourse.
But I think engaging with the suburban model is
important.
DY: It has to be a genuine engagement, I think that’s
the driving thing for me. I live in the suburbs where
families are still the predominant occupants. We have
high chain-link fences down the sides and can see
four backyards in one direction and three in the other
direction. There’s a dialogue that occurs because of
those fences, where you can talk to twice-removed
neighbours across backyards. There’s community
value ingrained in the idea of a collective social space,
which [you lose] as soon as you start to close every-
thing in.62 MAY 2017 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AUSTRALIA