A feast of speakers for the NZILA Firth Wānanga 2025 in Hastings

Operating on a premise that all good conference-followers and participants like to do some advance reading, LAA has been dipping into the remarkable stores of knowledge that international speakers Tim Waterman, Dr Joshua Zeunert and Nick Rose will be contributing to the 2025 NZILA Firth Wānanga's theme of edible landscapes on 22-23 May.

Tim Waterman, Josh Zeunert, Nick Rose

The quality and depth of the combined expert knowledge possessed by this trio of speakers is truly next level. While all three are prolifically active, putting together a trail of their activities is made easy by dint of their respective online presence at:

If you enjoy an occasional degustation, repeat visits to these sites will be rewarding - particularly for the insights into the people who are set to be front and centre at the 2025 NZILA Firth Wānanga in Heretaunga Hastings.

When you land on Tim's website for instance the ending to his 'About Me' page lifts a lid to a fascinating life. It reads as follows:

I am a former restaurateur (The Vox Coffeehouse in Moscow, Idaho) and classical and rock musician (Nirvana opened for my band in their early years) and because of that background I aim for a future that is both a little bit tasty and a little bit rock and roll. Our cities, countryside, suburbs, and wilderness need great landscape thinking to accomplish this. I can still often be found on a stage with a microphone, but nowadays I’m talking instead of singing.

Nick Rose's opening 'About' text is equally evocative, revealing and powerful. It reads:

I was a lawyer, a specialist legal researcher and writer, a research officer in a charity for whistleblowers, a trade union legal officer, and a founder and director of a human rights organisation in Central America, before I became a food sovereignty researcher, a food activist and an advocate for the necessity of transforming our food system.  It was while living in Guatemala from 2000-2006, where both my children were born, that I really became aware of how deeply unfair our world is; and really felt moved to do something about it.

From bottom to top, Josh's posts at joshuazeunert.com take in a range of diverse achievements.

All the way from receiving the Bruce Mackenzie Future Leaders Scholarship from the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) in 2009, to having works included in the 2023 Venice Biennial of Architecture and to launching the exciting archive FOOD | LANDSCAPES AUSTRALIA in 2024 with James Hargrave from Abstract8. (This archive is an immersive, interactive website containing 881 drone videos, 360-degree drone photography, an interactive map and 3D food elements systematically documenting the state of Australia’s agri-environment).

Held to book

Book and article writing is a trait of all three of the international speakers for the 2025 NZILA Firth Wānanga.

On Tim Waterman's account alone, LAA counted a veritable library of major titles attached to his name - as pictured above.

These titles are currently being augmented with Tim's shift into writing a group of four books (a tetralogy!) focused on what he calls "world-making, image-making, and taste-making imagination". The first was the subject of his inaugural professorial lecture just this month at the The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.

Ditto Josh Zeunert, who aside from being a serial article writer and podcaster and artist, has contributed chapters to Nadia Amoroso‘s book Representing Landscapes: Digital in 2015, Sustainable Urban Agriculture and Food Planning in 2016 and Approaches to Water Sensitive Urban Design in 2018, subsidiary to the authorial and award-winning triumph of his landmark book Landscape Architecture and Environmental Sustainability in 2017.

Topped off, it has to be said, with another award-winning book, the Routledge Handbook of Landscape and Food [this link takes you to a PDF link of the book’s introduction] - co-authored with … none other than Tim Waterman.

This party of book-makers wouldn't be complete without citing Nick Rose's Fair Food: Stories from a movement changing the world (UQP, 2014).

Then in 2018 another book emerged for Nick, with this lovely back story to it.

Nick: "In 2017 I had the privilege of meeting Dr Andrea Gaynor of the University of Western Australia, who wrote the seminal book on the history of urban agriculture in Australia – Harvest of the Suburbs - almost two decades ago.

"I asked her if she’d planned another edition and she said no, so I suggested we collaborate on an edited anthology which we ended up titling Reclaiming the Urban Commons: The past, present and future of food growing in Australian towns and cities".

So, in summary, if you're after an 'all you can read' serving on the topic of edible landscapes this should begin to whet your appetite.

And it should be a good encouragement to head to Heretaunga Hastings in May in order to pull up a seat for the full first-person experience; with a reminder to all NZILA members that early bird tickets are still on offer till next Thursday 27 March. Spread the word!

New Zealand speakers will include: Sandra Hazlehurst - Mayor of Heretaunga Hastings; Nigel Bickle, Ngāhiwi Tomoana, Graeme Hansen, and Charles Ropitini - Hastings District Council; Shannon Davis - Lincoln University; Morgan Maw - Boring Oat Milk; Peter Wilson - SLR; Renee Taylor - Salt Aotearoa; Mel Robinson - DGSE; Rachel Hill - WSP; Sarah Flynn and Monica Bainbridge - Boffa Miskell; Gary Marshall - Resilio Studio; Daniel McEwan - Chair NZILA Hawkes Bay/Manawatu/Taranaki branch; and Judge Laurie Newhook.

Landscape and Food, NZILA Firth Wānanga 2025, HastingsStephen Olsen