Charles Darwin created the landscape of Ascension Island. In 1836, he landed on Ascension on his journey home from the Galapagos Islands. It was a desolate volcanic landscape, devoid of any plant life, and a miserable place to live for the island’s few inhabitants. Since both Navy and merchant ships needed to use it regularly as a supply post, any improvement would be welcome. The lack of fresh water on the island, in particular, constrained its growth potential. Wandering among the crags, Darwin hatched a plan to turn Ascension into a ‘little England’.
It was after Darwin’s friend Joseph Hooker called at Ascension in 1843, that the two of them decided to turn the dream into reality. Hooker’s father was director of Kew Gardens, and it was arranged that the Royal Navy would deliver load after load of different trees and plants to Ascension. The idea was that the trees would capture the scant rain, help soil formation and gradually turn Ascension into a greener place.
In 1850 the first deliveries arrived, and year-by-year, a strange assortment of plant life was deposited on the island and everyone waited to see what would take root and thrive. By the late 1870s, eucalyptus, Norfolk Island pine, bamboo and banana were all well established and rapidly expanding in their new home.
The result today is precisely what Darwin intended – or possibly even better. An extraordinary mix of plant species, unique to the world, now grows on Ascension. On the highest peaks of the island a cloud forest captures and condenses the sea mist, creating the vital source of moisture on which all the other plants depend. Today Ascension has a healthy and self-sustaining ecosystem that completely transformed the landscape of the island.
By sheer serendipity, I read of this while making final preparations for our move into our new premises at Charles Darwin House in Bloomsbury. The main reason for leaving Great Portland Street is, of course, financially motivated. Our present office is too big and too expensive, and the new space will cut our costs in half. However, Charles Darwin House offers us much more than cheaper office space.
The building has been bought and refurbished by a consortium of three learned societies – the British Ecological Society, The Biochemical Society and the Society for Experimental Biology. As well as creating a new home for themselves, they have sufficient extra floor capacity to be able to rent out space to other learned societies, professional bodies or organisations of similar interests and values. The Landscape Institute is the first tenant organisation to move in, but the likelihood is that our future neighbours will include the Science Council and Birmingham University.
Sharing space in this way gives us two fantastic advantages. Firstly the building has excellent meeting facilities and it is set up to host seminars and conferences with up to 120 delegates. This means that for the first time we will be able to host events in our own offices. Secondly it means that we will find ourselves working more collaboratively with other like-minded bodies. For example, we often respond to the same policy consultations as the British Ecological Society, so it will be helpful to compare notes more readily with them on what we propose to say. We will also have immediate access to active research communities and will be able to learn more readily about work going on in various specialist fields that may have significance for landscape architecture.
The building itself has been fitted out to a BREEAM Excellent standard. The building design ensures low-environmental impact, low emissions of VOCs, highly energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, and low water-use systems.
Being able to move into Charles Darwin House is really a fantastic opportunity for the Landscape Institute and, ultimately, we owe that opportunity to an LI member who is also a member of one of the organisations based in Charles Darwin House.
It was clear when we first became aware of what this building had to offer that it was a chance not to be missed and there were many good reasons for relocating ourselves there. I was delighted to find that, on top of all of the good reasons we already had, we were moving into a building dedicated to the memory of a man, who, among his many other talents, had created an entire landscape on Ascension.
While we make this momentous transition there will be a brief interruption of service from the LI secretariat on 17 September and for the following few days as we settle in. Once we are established we hope that as many members as possible will take advantage of the facilities in the new office and we look forward to welcoming you there.
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