Missed a SGD Conference? Catch-up 'on-demand'
- Watch anytime, from anywhere.
- Soak in the knowledge & learn from our expert panel of speakers
- Watch recorded sessions all year round. You will have access to the video on demand archive for 12 months
SGD Spring Conference 2024
Between a Rock and a Soft Place - Pushing hard for a lighter impact
* This event took place in April 2024
Buy the Spring Conference 2024 on-demand videos here!Did you miss the SGD Conference: Between a Rock and a Soft Place - Pushing hard for a lighter impact - You can now catch-up on all the speaker presentations with the SGD Spring Conference 2024 Video On-Demand Archive. All sessions containing 5 hours of CPD content - instantly available to order now.
This conference delves into the fascinating world of the interface between mineral, vegetal and animal, with some emphasis on how and why inorganic materials impact on what plants grow and wildlife can thrive.
With changing mindsets on sustainable practice, the current ideal is to think locally, touch the soil lightly, and creatively exploit the repurposing and up-cycling of existing materials on site. But what are the best methodologies for garden designers who want to adopt this approach and how can we embrace a more holistic attitude to hard and soft landscaping?
With a panel of speakers that include specialists in the fields of ecology, construction, design, conservation and horticulture, the SGD Spring Conference will open up the debate and explore the current thinking and challenges of sustainable landscape practice.
Through their individual presentations and panel debates, our speakers will explain how their own methods can be applied to everyday garden projects that aim to minimise both the carbon footprint and the disruption to the natural ecology of a site.
Including talks from:
Darren Hawkes (Darren Hawkes Landscapes)
Julie Bargmann (D.I.R.T Studio)
Juliet Sargeant FSGD FLI MRCP
Mark Gregory (Landform Consultants)
Liz Nicholson and Robin Truslove (Nicholsons)
Helen Basson (Orchard Farm Landscaping Services, France)
Wambui Ippolito - Host
SGD Autumn Conference 2022
NATURAL NETWORKS: Connectivity in Garden and Landscape Design.
* This event took place in February 2023
Did you miss the SGD Autumn Conference 2022? You can now catch-up on all the speaker presentations with the SGD Autumn Conference 2022 Video On-Demand Archive. All sessions containing 5 hours of CPD content - instantly available to order now.
The speakers revealed their ideas and approaches to designing green spaces that are underpinned by the core principles of sustainability and the characteristics of site and local ecology.
While some of the projects presented are more extensive than the average residential garden, the design thinking and underlying values are directly transferrable to smaller spaces and more modest budgets.
Garden design practice happens at the multiple intersections of plants, places, people and the planet and holds dynamic potential for ensuring a sustainable future in a world of diminishing resources and climate change. A cast of distinguished speakers, including ecologists and landscape architects, will explore these natural networks through a range of public and private projects of different scales.
The keyword is connectivity: between people and the earth they tend, flora and fauna, garden designer and client, past and present uses of the site, landscape memories and creative imagination, seamless transitions between buildings and nature, children’s play spaces and their development through life
Including talks from:
Tom Hoblyn MSGD
People, Place and the Planet
Professor Helen Woolley FLI
Learning through landscape and children’s play spaces
Helen Elks-Smith FSGD
Connections through Time and Space
Dusty Gedge
Wilding Roofs for Nature and People
Lulu Urquhart & Adam Hunt
Flourishing Biodiversities: Designing for Nature
SGD Autumn Conference 2021
SENSE OF PLACE: listening to the land
Did you miss the SGD Autumn Conference 2021? You can now catch-up on all the speaker presentations with the SGD Autumn Conference 2021 Video On-Demand Archive. All sessions containing 5 hours of CPD content - instantly available to order now.
Speakers included:
The SGD Autumn conference explores genius loci, spirit, or sense of place. How to design with genuine sensitivity to the existing landscape; in other words, how to listen to the land.
The qualities and benefits of sense of place in landscape have been known for centuries, yet its essence often remains an esoteric and often misunderstood part of landscape design, something that is easily overlooked as an unnecessary complication or an impediment to budget. In an increasingly homogenised world, how do we create or maintain a space that speaks of and to its unique surroundings?
As garden & landscape designers, we have to think carefully about the layers that we add to a garden whilst acknowledging those that came before. Designs need to respect the past, and yet not be so ephemeral that they contribute nothing of lasting value.
Our conference speakers discussed contemporary and contextual landscape design, post ‘wild' landscapes, and working with the natural process, as well as how to respond sensitively to the atmosphere and mood of a site, how to distil or impart its unique character, and the challenges of working within the framework of one of the world’s best loved historical gardens.
They examined why the landscapes they design are worlds of their own, are wholly right for their locations, offer the chance for escape, delight, reflection and illumination, and respond sensitively to the atmosphere and mood of a site. They explained how we can truly 'listen to the land'.
Speakers include Isabella Tree, Troy Scott Smith, Charlotte Harris & Hugo Bugg, Aniket Bhagwat and Teresa Moller. The event was chaired by Humaira Ikram.
SGD Spring Conference 2021
OUR FUTURE HEALTH: how to unlock the restorative power of nature
Did you miss the Spring Conference 2021? You can now catch-up on all the speaker presentations with the SGD Spring Conference 2021 Video On-Demand Archive. All sessions containing 5 hours of CPD content - instantly available to order now.
During Digital Spring 2021 Conference, our speakers Sue Stuart-Smith, Tijana Blanusa, Olivia Kirk, Topher Delaney, Johanna Gibbons, Tom Stuart-Smith, and Faith Ramsay as our Chair, presented findings from contemporary research into the health benefits of green spaces and explored how garden design and plants can influence our sensory experiences, psychology and wellbeing. Our expert panel of speakers also examined the health problems we face in the modern world, they explained how we can mitigate these through the gardens and landscapes that we design, from sowing seeds at rehabilitation centres and community garden projects to the principles of user-led design, plant selection and spatial layout. All sessions are now avialable to watch online... Speakers included:
SGD Autumn Conference 2020
Garden Design in an Era of Climate Crisis
Did you miss the Autumn Conference 2020? You can now catch-up on all the speaker presentations with the SGD Autumn Conference Video On-Demand Archive. All sessions containing 5 hours of CPD content - instantly available to order now.
With the expertise and specialist knowledge of our celebrated speakers, the SGD Autumn Digital Conference focused on some of the most basic and precious resources we deal with: water, earth and plants. Presentations on these topics were presented by Robert Bray, Tim O’Hare and James Hitchmough and they looked at how we can use resources differently and better and do more with less. Sarah Eberle FSGD explored the meaning of sustainability, how we assess the impact of our actions and decisions, and how we identify areas of design or practice which we may need to reconsider. Dave Goulson looked at what gardens offer insects, how habitats can be increased and enhanced through design. Are natives or non-natives better plants for insects and our changing climate? Conference Chair Mark Laurence MSGD held the threads of these interrelated and complex topics and helped to signal ways in which ideas and designs can be regenerative and create beautiful, ecologically diverse havens that build soils and sequester carbon, and be feasible with a low footprint. Surely this has to be the new role for all garden and landscape designs? We know filming the conference will provide inspiration & education to those that can't travel, or can't attend. Don't miss out, our on-demand coverage is the next best thing to being there. The Conference Speakers (from left to right): Robert Bray, Tim O'Hare, James Hitchmough, Sarah Eberle FSGD, Dave Goulson, & Mark Laurence MSGDSpeakers included:
SGD Spring Conference 2020
The Source 2: Inspiration, Creativity, and the Big Idea
Did you miss the Spring Conference 2020? You can now catch-up on all the speaker presentations with the SGD Spring Conference Video On-Demand Archive. All sessions containing 5 hours of CPD content - instantly available to order now.
The SGD Digital Spring 2020 Conference lifted the lid on the use of colour in the garden, looking beyond fashions and trends and exploring the subject from all points, from artistic to scientific. An impressive line-up of speakers included American landscape architect Steve Martino, whose work blends colourful, man-made elements with native plants to reflect the sun-drenched beauty of the American desert; garden designer Emily Erlam, known for her exuberant, colourful planting, sensitivity to the existing landscape and designs will explored the seduction of colour and creation of drama. Head Gardener and plantsman Benjamin Pope continued the story looking at colour through eyes on the ground as he maintains and develops a country garden in West Sussex. His talk explored how colour can be used to create and enhance atmosphere using fruit, vegetables and flowers. Edward Hutchison has used colour as an essential tool throughout his career working as a landscape architect and he will show how his use of colour stretches his creative vision and thoughts as both designer and artist In addition, Irish gardening consultant and planting designer Jimi Blake explored the use of colour in his garden at Hunting Brook in County Wicklow, focusing on the colour combinations of flowers and foliage and discussing how he creates tapestries of colour throughout his exotic areas, perennial beds and woodland gardens; and Mike Allaby, author of more than 100 books on plant science, introduced the often curious reasons as to how and why colour is perceived in the gardens and landscapes that surround us, from a scientific perspective. The conference was be chaired by Stephanie Mahon, editor of the Garden Design Journal who examined how colour is expressed and how it changes its nature depending on how it is consumed - either through paint on a canvas, ink on a page, pixels on a screen or light in your garden. Join us to discover how the right use of colour in garden design – from plants to hard landscaping - can enhance us as individuals, reinforce our connections with the gardens and landscapes we create, and influence the way we use space. You can now catch-up on all the speaker presentations with the SGD Spring Conference Video On Demand Archive. Speakers included:
SGD Autumn Conference 2019
The Source 2: Inspiration, Creativity, and the Big Idea
Did you miss the Autumn Conference 2019? You can now catch-up on all the speaker presentations with the SGD Autumn Conference Video On-Demand Archive. All sessions containing 5 hours of CPD content - instantly available to order now.
Chaired by multi-award winning designer Cleve West MSGD, a line-up of internationally renowned speakers shared their individual approaches to creativity; the conference offered a rare insight into how they nurture and cultivate imagination, and how they recognise a potentially successful idea and convert it into reality. Speakers included Matt Keightley MSGD and Cameron Wilson from Rosebank Landscaping, landscape architect Jenny Coe, Haruko Seki from Studio Lasso, Luciano Giubbilei, and Greek architect and landscape architect Thomas Doxiadis.. Catchup on the videos from Autumn Conference 2019 here Speakers included:
SGD Spring Conference 2019
SEX IN THE GARDEN: Flowers, fruit & foraging
Did you miss the Spring Conference? You can now catch-up on all the speaker presentations with the SGD Spring Conference Video On-Demand Archive. All sessions containing 5 hours of CPD content - instantly available to order now.
Our acclaimed speakers included Emma Desmier, Olivier Filippi, Noel Kingsbury, Michael Marriott, Henrik Sjöman, Jim Buckand & Sarah Wain - they offered improved strategies in plantsmanship, review species selection for changing climate, biodiversity and maintenance regimes, and revealed how to make the most of scent and extend the season of flower and excitement based on the most reliable, spectacular and valued flowering and fruiting plants. Catchup on the videos from Spring Conference 2019 hereSpeakers included:
