In 1958, Mary Mitchell became Birmingham City Architect’s Department’s first landscape architect, working alongside the architect Alwyn Sheppard Fidler and together they introduced a progressive approach to post-war housing landscapes. Although many of these pioneering schemes have since disappeared, they represent an important and overlooked part of Birmingham’s landscape heritage.  After leaving the City Architect’s Department, Mitchell established her own practice in Edgbaston, designing landscapes for clients including the University of Birmingham, Edgbaston High School for Girls and Birmingham Botanical Gardens.  This talk explores Mitchell’s career and argues for her recognition as one of the key figures in shaping Birmingham’s twentieth-century landscapes.

Dr Joy Burgess is a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in Landscape Studies in the Department of Architecture at the University of Liverpool, currently carrying out the postdoctoral research project Feminist Cartographies, with residencies at Birmingham Botanical Gardens, The Museum of English Rural Life, and the Landscape Institute. The project maps women’s twentieth-century landscape architectural practice and brings this research into public-facing museum and educational contexts through creative pedagogies.

This event is brought about by Propagating Birmingham Botanical Gardens’ Story, funded by an ‘Archives Revealed’ Cataloguing Grant. The programme is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Pilgrim Trust, the Wolfson Foundation and The National Archives.

Organised by Archive of the Birmingham Botanical Gardens