As the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects Tuia Pito Ora prepares to mark its 50th anniversary, one of the founding executive committee members, Neil Aitken, has been reminiscing.

Neil, who is now retired and living in Porirua, was also the fourth NZILA president (1980-1983) and one of the five foundation students taking on the country’s first Landscape Architecture course at the then Lincoln College which began in 1969.

Speaking on a sunny Wellington winter day, Neil told LAA that he can’t quite believe it has been 50 years since the Institute got up and running.

“ I know this sounds silly, but I can't believe how much has happened. The institute over that 50 years has gone through fundamental change.”

And he says he is proud of the role he had in getting the institute off the ground.

“Seems a bit highfalutin, but yes, I mean, I was an integral part of that … and yes, yes, I do have some pride and satisfaction for what was achieved over quite a short time in those initial years.”

Neil says he started his working life in ornamental horticulture doing an apprenticeship with the Parks and Reserves Department of the Christchurch City Council. “As part of my apprenticeship, I worked for the Tourist Hotel Corporation of New Zealand with Robin Gay (NZILA President 1978-1980) … that summer at Mount Cook gave me a feeling for the greater landscape that lay beyond and the just grasslands and the southern Alps. And so I realised then that to return to the religion of municipal horticulture wasn't really for me.”

He then joined George Malcolm, another foundation NZILA executive committee member, at the landscape section of the Ministry of Works and Development where he worked until 1969 when he went to study at Lincoln under Charlie Challenger.

Neil along with Hedley Evans, Emily Mulligan, Robin Gay and Tony Jackman were the first five official landscape architecture students based in Aotearoa.

Soon after graduation Neil and Tony along with Charlie, George and Frank Boffa, among others, starting thinking about the need for a professional body.

“Frank being an American graduate and experienced with the American Society of Landscape Architects was the genesis. And then together with Tony Jackman, who was then in the landscape consulting service at Lincoln and they set things in train,” he says.

“There was a sort of a nearly a missionary zeal when an organisation like this starts and it was a Herculean effort and to get it off the deck.”

He says it was a challenging but exciting time. “An organisation is only embryonic once and you can't recapture that amazing feeling when you know something new and is created.”

Neil has an interesting perspective on the state of the landscape architecture profession now. He believes there is greater emphasis on the individual and rather than the collective and sees that as a global trend. “I think attitudes have changed. Probably being an old fellow, I lament that a wee bit.”

“I think that the Institute has got to face a land use and expansion crisis in New Zealand,” says Neil.

“I think it's going to be very much a human challenge in a sense that obviously is underpinned with an environmental one, but it's getting across that human interface and convincing people of the breadth of that landscape input and recognition.”

Neil has a message for all involved with NZILA over the years.

“You can look back with some pride … but you can't rest on your laurels,” he says.

“We had to seek recognition as a profession. But now somehow you as members have to consolidate where you're at in terms of your acceptance, but also broaden what you do, particularly not only in terms of drawings and design and computer aided stuff, but also on the human advocacy front. I think that's where the challenge lies.”

Neil, who became a Life Member of the Institute in 2004, isn’t able to join others celebrating the profession at the 2022 NZILA Firth Conference in Auckland in October but sends his very best wishes.