NZILA 50th: Landscape architecture pioneer Charlie Challenger

Sydney ‘Charlie’ Challenger is widely seen as the founder and father of landscape architecture in Aotearoa.

As Tuia Pito Ora New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects prepares to mark its 50th Anniversary later this year, LAA is profiling some of the people who have contributed to getting the profession where it is today.

In many ways it is important to start with Charlie - as he was known - because he founded the first landscape architecture course at what was then Lincoln College which launched in 1969.

Sydney ‘Charlie Challenger’ - Image credit - Lincoln University https://livingheritage.lincoln.ac.nz/nodes/view/6188

He grew up in pre-war Britain. He loved the countryside and remembered his boyhood bicycle excursions around Gloucestershire as being a major formative influence. With a degree from the University of Reading Charlie lectured in horticultural science at the University of Bristol. In 1956, he and his wife, Pat, emigrated to New Zealand and he became a lecturer in horticulture at Lincoln Agricultural College in New Zealand. By the time he became head of the horticulture department in 1962, he had read avidly about landscape architecture and saw a need for it in New Zealand.

In 1963 he was given a personal grant by a fellow nurseryman of one hundred pounds to take a sabbatical trip.

Speaking to Shona McCahon in his oral history for NZILA, Charlie said he’d seen pamphlets in the Lincoln files from Newcastle University in his home country of England. In it were images of landscape architecture in Sweden – so that’s where he headed for his sabbatical and, according to Challenger, “it’s from that, that the whole of the landscape architecture in New Zealand has sprung.”

“I was absolutely overwhelmed with this sight of what landscape could be.” he told McCahon. “I was so impressed with the attitude to design as a whole, everything was designed.”

He returned to Lincoln in 1968 with just six months to set up the two-year postgraduate diploma course (Dip LA) and to find a teaching assistant – former horticulture student, Frank Boffa, who had just qualified as a landscape architect in the United States. The first intake of five students graduated in 1971.

Charlie was well aware of the hurdles that his students would face when they went out to work in this virtually unknown profession. He knew it was often seen as a fancy form of gardening and felt his first graduates had to be “apostles who had to sell themselves to people who were suspicious of them.”

He was among a small group who founded the NZILA in 1972 and he became a life member 10 years later.

He headed Lincoln’s landscape architecture department for 15 years, retiring in 1982. Since then the Dip LA at Lincoln has been replaced by a bachelors degree, and Masters and PhD programmes in landscape architecture have been added.

When the NZILA Awards programme began in 1987 it was with just two awards - one named for Charlie Challenger. These days one of the Institute’s two supreme awards carries his name.

Charlie received Lincoln University’s highest award in 2002 - an honorary doctorate in natural resources.

He died at his Christchurch home in 2007. Many of his former students paid tribute to him at this time.

Sydney 'Charlie' Challenger with his two sons Stuart and Neil. Image credit - Lincoln University https://livingheritage.lincoln.ac.nz

Robin Gay was one of the foundation students in the first diploma course. He said Charlie was “absolutely stimulating and he had an amazing sense of what New Zealand should be doing and where we should be going with our landscape.” Gay, also an NZILA Life Member, died in 2008.

One of Charlie’s 1972 students, Gordon Griffin said every one of his lectures was a work of art.

“I wondered if there might be another level of consciousness that saw us and heard Charlie and marvelled at the ideals and vision and zeal and beauty of his lectures and his self, and at our level, it seemed a pity that each of those lectures was not being filmed and stored for others to see and hear, for posterity. We were very lucky. All enriched still more by his lovely accent.”

Renee Davies was the NZILA President at the time of his death. She said then that many senior members of the profession were educated by Charlie.

“All of us have been influenced by and benefited from his leadership in education and the profession.

“Charlie’s significant and ongoing contribution to the landscape architecture profession, is recognised through our bi-annual NZILA Pride of Place Landscape Awards where excellence in landscape planning is awarded the Charlie Challenger Supreme Award”.

Former NZILA President Di Lucas said he was the inspiration for the profession in NZ.

“We owe our skills, commitment and passion for the protection and restoration of, and creative change and problem solving in, NZ landscapes to Charlie's teachings and leadership through the years when the profession was established.

“NZ landscape architects are often seen as world leaders in the profession. Charlie should be credited with that.’’

Just a reminder the Institute will celebrate its 50th anniversary with its covid delayed 2022 NZILA Firth Conference in Auckland in October which will culminate in the Resene New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architecture Awards gala dinner on the 13th of October at the Cordis Hotel.