Join us for a conference that will explore how existing urban landscapes can be refurbished to be more efficient, better for the environment and more sustainable for the future. Aimed at those practising and studying in the areas of Landscape Architecture, Garden Design, and Urban Planning.
In a world where urban landscapes too often feel disconnected from nature, green retrofitting – or sustainably repurposing existing spaces – offers a powerful way to reimagine our cities. The Garden Museum has joined forces with the Landscape Institute London Branch, set against the inspiring backdrop of Lambeth Green, our own transformative urban greening project to dive into the future green retrofitting our cities.
This conference will explore how we can make green retrofitting more accessible, connect communities with vibrant public spaces, and overcome the real-world challenges of implementing green infrastructure. Lambeth Green itself is breathing new life into five acres around the Museum, transforming streets and forgotten corners into a lush tapestry of gardens, pathways, and communal spaces.
This half –day conference and workshop will showcase pioneering case studies from the UK and Europe. Together, we’ll unpack strategies to make green retrofitting a seamless part of urban design, examine how to spark collaboration among diverse stakeholders, and explore bold, practical solutions to cultivate cities that are both resilient and rooted in nature. Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of a conversation shaping the green cities of tomorrow.
The conference begins with an early morning coffee meet-up, followed by a site visit to Lambeth Junction to see a green retrofit in action. Back at the Garden Museum, we will hear a series of rapid presentations from UK and international landscape experts followed by mid-morning panel discussions and breakout groups will then tackle core challenges in green retrofitting, with the day concluding in a vibrant feedback session to shape future urban greening initiatives.
Key confirmed speakers listed below, we will also be joined by a member of Dan Pearson Studio. More speakers TBC.
Speakers
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Ton Muller, Head of Design for the Amsterdam Municipality
Ton Muller, Head of Design for the Amsterdam Municipality
Ton Muller, Head of Design for the Amsterdam Municipality. Muller's work revolves around public urban landscapes that are tuned to nature. He is works as a landscape designer, green supervisor and a planting expert for a wide range of complex green urban projects. His work is rooted in a Dutch tradition of nature based green and planting design.
Working for the city of Amsterdam for over 25 years, Muller has experimented with different ways of creating green environments, from strategy to designing urban plantings to create more liveable spaces.
He is pioneering new habitat based approaches to planting in public realm, and the build environment, to create resilient plant communities; he collaborates with urban planners, ecologists and architects.
His work brings together themes like biodiversity, climate-adaption, water management, community building, and maintenance.
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Tom Jonson, Director of Landscape Architecture at LUC
Tom Jonson, Director of Landscape Architecture at LUC
Tom Jonson is a landscape architect and urban designer with masters degrees in both disciplines. He is Director of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design and leads LUCs Manchester Design Team. Tom has over 27 years experience in town and city centre public realm design. He has been responsible for leading on a number of high profile city centre public realm schemes from initial inception through to implementation on the ground. A key aspect of many of these projects was prioritising the pedestrian experience over vehicle movement. Tom is also passionate about creating places that provide people with meaningful contact with nature as well as spaces that help address issues such as climate change and the biodiversity crisis. The award winning Mill Lane linear park project that Tom led on in Leicester City Centre in 2016 involved turning an existing road into a new linear park where new rain gardens replaced the existing positive drainage system thus saving over 2 ½ Olympic swimming pools of water being discharged into the adjacent River Soar every year. Tom is currently leading on the Limerick Public Realm Strategy as well as the Hereford City Masterplan project both of which involve reducing the dominance of vehicles in urban environments as well as introducing significant green infrastructure into both city centres. He is also leading on the Clifden, Roscommon and Athenry town centre enhancement projects in Ireland.
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Melanie Charalambous, Policy and Projects Group Manager for the City of London
Melanie Charalambous, Policy and Projects Group Manager for the City of London
Melanie Charalambous, Group Manager - Policy and Projects for the City of London Environment Department. Charalambous has worked for the City of London Corporation since 2002, originally as a Project Manager and more recently as a Group Manager overseeing a team of project managers within the Transport and Public Realm section, including the Aldgate Gyratory transformation scheme. She has delivered a wide variety of projects, ranging from area-based strategies for City districts to new public spaces. Before working for the City Corporation, she was a planning officer at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
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Dilip Lakhani, Senior Landscape Architect
Dilip Lakhani, Senior Landscape Architect
Dilip Lakhani is an experienced landscape architect with specific interests in planting and soft landscape design accompanied by a breadth and experience of horticultural knowledge.
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Dr Phil Askew, Director of Landscape, Peabody
Dr Phil Askew, Director of Landscape, Peabody
Dr Phil Askew is Director of Landscape at Peabody. He is leading landscape and green infrastructure design and implementation across all of Peabody’s existing and planned estates. At Thamesmead he is leading one of London’s largest regeneration and development projects where there is a green infrastructure and landscape led approach underpinned by our GI strategy Living in the Landscape making the most of its unique green and blue assets. Phil has a background in Landscape Architecture, Urban Design and Horticulture and prior to his current role he led the design and delivery of the London 2012 Olympic Park at the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) and its transformation into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park with the LLDC, the UKs largest new urban park in over a century.
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Elizabeth Connolly, Head of Landscape, Peabody
Elizabeth Connolly, Head of Landscape, Peabody
With a foundation in horticulture, design, and technical detail, Elizabeth Connolly has built a 30-year career in the landscape industry. She began as a botanical horticulturist at the University of Birmingham Botanic Gardens and other notable locations, before combining her expertise in horticulture and design through garden design and landscape architecture. Now Head of Landscape at Peabody, Elizabeth focuses on landscape and public realm regeneration, leading the development and management of diverse public greenspaces and playscapes. She has also worked on a variety of private commissions throughout her career. Passionate about creating spaces that engage communities and deliver positive, lasting impacts, Elizabeth is dedicated to developing liveable landscapes that enhance the quality of life for residents.
