Sylvia Crowe Explained

Dame Sylvia Crowe, DBE (15 September 1901  - 30 June 1997)[1] was an English landscape architect and garden designer.[2] [3]

Biography

Crowe was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, the daughter of Beatrice (Stockton) and Eyre Crowe, a cabinet manufacturer. Her father retired early due to ill health and moved the family to Felbridge, Sussex, to work as fruit farmer. Crowe attended Berkhamsted Girls' School, Hertfordshire from 1908 to 1912, and as a result of her suffering from tuberculosis she was also home schooled on the family farm. She trained under Madeline Agar at Swanley Horticultural College (later absorbed into Hadlow College, which continues to teach University of Greenwich courses in garden design).[4]

After college, Crowe served an apprenticeship with Edward White at the Milner, Son & White company and then worked as a garden and landscape designer for 14 years.[4] In July 1939 she was elected to the Council of the Institute of Landscape Architects, later the Landscape Institute.[4] During World War II, Crowe served in France as an ambulance driver with the Polish Army.[4]

After the War, Crowe served as President of the Institute of Landscape Architects from 1957 to 1959 and made important contributions to landscape planning for new towns, roads and forestry.[4] Among her notable projects is the roof garden for the Scottish Widows building in Edinburgh, created using native Scottish plants.

In relation to the New Towns, she worked on Harlow between 1948 and 1958, followed by Basildon between 1949 and 1962. She also developed landscape plans for Washington and Hemel Hempstead.[5] Her first book, "Tomorrow's Landscape" would seem to be a direct reference to Ebenezer Howard's vision for Garden Cities "Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform". thumb|Cumberland Piazza in Bristol designed by Crowe in 1964In 1964 she designed a piazza near the Cumberland bridge flyover in Bristol. The area had got run down but in 2011 the area was refreshed and the original plants were still there.[6] In the 1960s, Crowe shared an office with Brenda Colvin, also president of the ILA.[7] In 1964 Crowe prepared a landscape masterplan for Commonwealth Park in Canberra, Australia.

In 1969, landscape architect Kenneth Booth designed the cooling towers for Ironbridge B power station and was heavily influenced by the advice set out in Crowe's The Landscape of Power (1958).[8]

In the mid-20th century Lower Soughton Hall at Northop in Flintshire belonged to the Gray family. In 1972, Stephen Alexander Reith Gray was Flintshire High Sheriff and Chief Executive of Shotton Steelworks. He commissioned Crowe and Raymond Cutbush to redesign the gardens and they remain much as they look today, with formal and informal features which includes herbaceous borders, yew hedges and island beds with mixed planting.[9]

Crowe received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1977.[10]

Crowe died at St Mary's Hospital, London on 30 June 1997 of bronchopneumonia, aged 95. She never married.

Awards[11]

Written work

References

  1. News: Staff. Dame Sylvia Crowe obituary. The Times. London, UK. The Times Digital Archive 1785 - 2008. 10 July 1997. 25.
  2. Web site: Gardening - Design - Modern. bbc.co.uk. 15 October 2008. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20121113061032/http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/design/nonflash_modern3.shtml. 13 November 2012.
  3. Hal Moggridge, "Crowe, Dame Sylvia" (1901–1997), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; accessed 8 October 2010.
  4. Web site: Sylvia Crowe. University of Brighton Design Archives. 23 May 2020.
  5. Web site: Sylvia Crowe .
  6. Web site: Gardens (en). Parks and. Cumberland Basin. 13 April 2021. Parks & Gardens. en.
  7. News: Alexander . Rosemary . Anthony du Gard Pasley obituary . 25 November 2021 . The Observer . 15 November 2009 . en.
  8. Web site: Saumarez Smith . Otto . Cooling towers are a powerful presence in the landscape – and deserve to be saved . Apollo Magazine . 24 February 2020 . 3 March 2020.
  9. Web site: Lower Soughton Hall . Parks & Gardens . 31 December 1710 . 3 March 2020.
  10. Web site: Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh: Honorary Graduates. hw.ac.uk. 6 April 2016.
  11. Web site: Dame Sylvia Crowe. Institute of Landscape Architects.
  12. Book: Crowe. Sylvia. The Pattern of Landscape. Mitchell. Mary. 1988. Packard. 978-1-85341-020-8. en.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sylvia Crowe".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.