In January, join Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading for the beginning of an online series of talks in partnership with the Gardens Trust, on six women – Susan Jellicoe, Sheila Haywood, Brenda Colvin, Mary Mitchell, Marjory Allen and Marian Thompson – who all contributed to the expertise, development and awareness of the landscape profession and in so many different ways. A ticket is for the series of 6 talks at £42 or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8. (Gardens Trust and FOLAR members £6 each or all 6 for £31.50). There will be an opportunity for Q & A after each session. Please note that the 6th and final talk in this series is on 30th April. Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. For tickets visit www.eventbriteco.uk

Join us in this online series to hear from these special speakers – Sally Ingram, Paula Laycock, Hal Moggridge, Joy Burgess, Wendy Titman and Bruce Thompson – who have each known, worked with, or researched one of these six remarkable women. On January 8, the first lecture will be on The Photographs of Susan Jellicoe.

Susan Pares Jellicoe (1907-1986) joined the office of Jellicoe, Page and Wilson as a secretary in 1936 and went on to become a highly regarded honorary member of the Institute of Landscape Architects, collaborating with Geoffrey Jellicoe in all aspects of his work. When the International Federation of Landscape Architects was formed after the war, Susan Jellicoe’s skills as a linguist, and her wartime experiences, were instrumental in promoting international understanding between nations. The work of Geoffrey Jellicoe has overshadowed Susan’s contribution to the study of twentieth century landscape design, and yet she was an accomplished plantswoman, writer, editor, and a skilled self-taught photographer.

Drawing on Susan Jellicoe’s collection of thousands of small black and white photographs, taken during the 1950s and 60s and pasted on sheets of brown paper, this talk will consider her extensive journey with a camera, capturing the post war landscape. Sylvia Crowe commented of the time ‘we all thought we could make a new world’ and this unique archive creates a visual narrative of the mid twentieth century, filtered through the preoccupations of a distinctly modern eye.

After a career in education Sally Ingram completed an MA in Garden History at Birkbeck, University of London, and has continued to research aspects of garden history for a number of projects. Her particular interest is in the twentieth century landscape and her MA dissertation considered the design of memorial parks and gardens in the post war era. She studied the work of Geoffrey Jellicoe when investigating his design for the roof garden at Harvey’s department store in Guildford and discovered Susan Jellicoe’s photograph albums, in the archive at the Landscape Institute. She has continued to explore this fascinating collection of over 6,000 images – now at MERL – and its significance in the history of the post war urban landscape.