Club Meeting, 19 May 2025 – CT White Lecture: Lawrie Smith AM, Design with Nature

Lawrie is an architect and landscape architect. He has always been interested in exploring the Australian bush. He established his own landscape consultancy, Landplan Studio, in Brisbane in 1974, which has been recognised as one of Australia’s most progressive landscape architectural consultancies. Throughout his five-decade career Lawrie has applied his philosophy “Design with Nature” and comprehensive knowledge of Australian plant communities in the design of numerous botanic gardens, urban parklands and notably the landscape of World Expo 88.

The importance of gardens

Throughout my career in landscape architecture, I have applied the philosophy of ‘Design with Nature’ in all of the projects, and specifically the public parks and botanic gardens for which I have been responsible. Public gardens generally and botanic gardens particularly are places where the community can be encouraged to reconnect with nature. Contemporary urban communities are becoming increasingly divorced from the “natural” landscape origins from which we all evolved, with consequent increasing physical and psychological problems. A garden is a very special space that can restore our natural association with nature and importantly, improve our health and wellbeing.

Towards the future

For more than 60,000 years the Aboriginal people trod very lightly on this continent; but after only 200 years of less than exemplary stewardship we contemporary Australians must accept the responsibility to radically change direction toward a sustainable, environmentally aware future. We must similarly come to terms with this land, to understand that every mountain, river, lake, plant and animal is part of the Australian web of life ….. and like it or not we humans are integrally entwined within that web. Whatever the future holds for the planning and design of our cities and towns, I believe it is fundamentally important that Australian native plants are widely acknowledged as a principal component of our built landscapes of any scale.

Career influences

It would not have been possible to create my legacy of this diverse range of parks and gardens, each with its own unique Australian regional character, without the close association I have enjoyed as a member of the Australian Native Plants Society (SGAP / NPQ in Queensland). Being integrally involved with this organisation at all levels for more than 50 years, has allowed me the opportunity to access some of Australia’s foremost botanists and horticulturalists. This has ensured that every project for which I have been responsible celebrates the unique Australian flora of the relative bioregion by interpreting and demonstrating to the community, the potential that the local flora has for use in amenity horticulture.

That is the significance of practising……… Design with Nature!