The LI Awards are presented to landscape professionals in recognition of their outstanding work, and to encourage excellence. Every year, the LI applauds those working on the most innovative projects to have shaped, restored and protected the natural and built environment.
The awards shine a spotlight on the exceptional work of a diverse group of landscape professionals including landscape architects, designers, managers, planners and researchers.
The main aims of the LI Awards
The awards:
- promote landscape professionals
- advance the knowledge and understanding of all landscape disciplines
- celebrate professional expertise
- reward schemes that demonstrate a high level of commitment to sustainability
The important role of landscape professionals
We want the public to know about the work of our most creative and innovative landscape professionals, because their work can have a big impact on people’s lives.
Take a look at any of the LI landscape winners and you’ll see all the different public benefits they offer including health, environmental, social, and economic. For instance, landscapes can promote positive mental and physical health, bring communities together – and, increasingly, address the issues of sustainability and climate change.
Indeed, landscapes feature in many aspects of people’s lives, as noted by poet Ian McMillan, an LI Awards judge in 2010, who said of landscapes:
“They’re memory-scapes too. Not only living memories, as you recall walks and picnics or working days and freezing nights, but memories beyond the living; memories held in stone, in hillsides, in field-patterns, in ruins, in bridges, in front doors and back gardens, in high hills that define how we think and vast expanses that shape the way we experience perspective.”
The LI Award categories
There are a total of 21 awards. This includes:
- 13 professional categories reflecting the breadth of work done by landscape professionals
- two student categories
- one open category, the Dame Sylvia Crowe Award for Outstanding International Contribution to People, Place & Nature, which rewards excellence and leadership in the worldwide field of landscape and place
LI members nominate candidates for the Client of the Year, New Landscape Professional of the Year and Volunteer of the Year Awards.
In addition, the Fellows’ Award is presented to LI members for their contribution to the landscape industry. The final award – which is the top landscape prize of the year – is the President’s Award, which is selected by the LI President from the winners of the Professional, Open and Student categories.
We have an obligation to promote the best work that the profession produces and a key way of doing this is by showcasing projects at the annual awards. The success that we have achieved at the LI Awards is shared with colleagues and client’s alike and is of particular benefit to publicly funded projects where this acknowledgement is an important part of the legacy of the project.
Neil Davidson CMLI, J & L Gibbons (2015 winner for Adding Value through Landscape)
LI Awards categories
Professional categories
- Adding Value Through Landscape / Environmental Improvement Award
- Design for a Small Scale Development Award
- Design for a Medium Scale Development Award
- Design for a Large Scale Development Award
- Design for a Temporary Landscape Project Award
- Communications and Presentation Award
- Heritage and Conservation Award
- Science, Management and Stewardship Award
- Landscape Policy and Research Award
- Local Landscape Planning Award
- Strategic Landscape Planning Award
- Urban Design and Masterplanning Award
- Strategic ecology, horticulture and planting design
Open categories
- Dame Sylvia Crowe Award for Outstanding International Contribution to People, Place and Nature
Student Awards
- Student Dissertation Award
- Student Portfolio Award
Special Awards
- Client of the Year Award
- New Landscape Professional of the Year Award
- Volunteer of the Year Award
Special Accolades
- Fellows’ Award
- President’s Award
Who can enter the LI Awards?
Any project that was completed during the last 10 years preceding the year of the award can be submitted. (For the two student awards, only work from the three years preceding the year of the award is eligible.)
For more details about the LI Awards and submission requirements, go to the LI Awards 2018 website.
Guest hosts for the LI Awards
The LI invites distinguished guests to host the LI Awards each year. Past hosts include writer and broadcaster Jonathon Porritt, designer Wayne Hemingway and Sir Timothy Bartel Smit, creator of the Eden Project in Cornwall. Take a look at the celebrity presenters from the last ten years.
