Award-winning American landscape architect Thomas Woltz last month told a Melbourne audience about some of his most high-budget, heroic farm and park projects. But in the quiet of his hotel room, he also spoke about his garden.
It's in Charlottesville, Virginia, and filled with perennials, shrubs, vegetable beds and lengthy Hornbeam hedges, the pruning of which is his "back-breaking delight". Speaking over the phone, Woltz says that not only does gardening make you happy, but it also connects you to the "rhythm of the seasons" and makes you a "better steward of the land". It's the same with his landscape design.
![Restored beauty: NBW's Earthworks Garden, on Orango Station, New Zealand.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170526043706im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/v/q/o/x/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.guvoiw.png/1489363842931.jpg)
No one has married restorative ecology with landscape architecture quite like Woltz, the owner of Nelson Byrd Woltz, a firm with more than 90 awards under its belt.
Woltz, whose lecture at RMIT was hosted by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, is in the process of establishing a "field office" in Melbourne. He designs landscapes (everything from remote farms to inner-city roof-tops) that "fix broken ecologies" and "honour history". Whatever the project, he says, it's crucial to remember the importance of place and that there is nothing more "beautiful" than "high functionality".
![NBW's work on transforming the Orongo Station included a restored wetlands area.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170526043706im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/v/q/o/t/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.guvoiw.png/1489363842931.jpg)
"I want to make sure any landscape finds its roots in the cultural and ecological history of that area. I don't just want to make a cool form and tick the box." When, early in his career, he designed a tiny New York courtyard, he began by observing the flight paths and nesting behaviour of birds, and then grew bird-friendly climbers up the walls. When designing more sprawling gardens atop railway lines or freeway flyovers today, he follows similar methodologies. He says it's a matter of researching the ecology of an area, "even when there is no ecology to be seen", and bridging its cultural history through plants.
From the start, Woltz says, he has viewed landscape architecture as a powerful tool for repairing environmental mistakes and "finding stories that have been buried by those allowed to tell history". His first ideas were about how to design farms – their layout, roads, fences, even the movement of livestock – so they were both efficient agricultural enterprises and beautiful. And now he sees landscape architects as also having a role in toxic clean-ups, the restoration of industrial sites and the resuscitation of other spaces they once had nothing to do with.
"When I graduated from a master's degree in landscape architecture there was so much press about the fact that agriculture was the largest contributor of non-point-source pollution and it occurred to me that landscape architects are trained in drainage, grading, soils, geology, horticulture, wildlife biology, sensitivity to cultural landscapes … we have the tools to help this."
One of his biggest projects – a 1200-hectare New Zealand sheep station that was the landing point for Captain Cook's crew in 1769 – has now been running for 15 years. In collaboration with local environmentalists and Maori tribal leaders, Woltz and his team have overseen the planting of 500,000 trees, the restoration and construction of 30 hectares of wetlands and the reintroduction of an endangered endemic reptile, all integrated with an active, profitable agricultural operation.
![Thomas Woltz is a firm believer in landscape architects' ability to help restore degraded environments.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170526043706im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/v/q/o/4/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.guvoiw.png/1489363842931.jpg)
But Woltz says the transformation only occurred thanks to the property's "philanthropically minded" (American) owner, and maintains that to repair the world's most damaged ecologies, it is vital to bring private landowners on board. "If we wait for our public landscape to do work of restoration ecology we won't get there."
He says "anything that connects you to land even in small ways" is an "important step towards stewardship" and that horticulture is a powerful reminder of our mortality.
![The proposed Public Square and Gardens at Hudson Yards. Artist's impression by Visual House-Nelson Byrd Woltz.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170526043706im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/v/q/n/b/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.guvoiw.png/1489363842931.jpg)
"I really believe that historically we got it wrong when we thought our greatest ambition was to retire and do nothing … it's amazing the small delight people take in growing their own herbs or strawberries," he says. "I think it's really important to our emotional wellbeing to have contact with plants. The more dense and alienating our cities become, the more we crave and need that contact with horticulture."