PHYLLIS SIMONS (1921-) (Fellow)

Photo: Edwina Richardson.

 

Like many other early women Landscape Architects, Phyllis Simons was born in Melbourne.  She was inspired by cottage gardens depicted in Girl’s Own Annual and started a career in science, as architecture was regarded as an unsuitable profession for women.  Simons undertook the first year of a science degree from Melbourne University and later joined CSIRO as a technical assistant during WW2.  At the end of the war she married a returned serviceman and moved to northern NSW.     Image from Landscape Australia 3/1992, p197.

 

Living with her husband and young baby in a shack behind the dunes at Ballina, she scoured the dunes observing and drawing plants.  Not knowing what the plants were she wrote to Thistle Harris (an expert on Australian plants) and sent her sketches.  Harris kindly returned her letter identifying the plants for Simons. 

In the 1950’s Simons joined the conservation movement, and was a founding member of the Society for Growing Australian Plants.  Her concern for the environment continued - in the 1970’s she was involved in the campaign to protect Lake Pedder, Tasmania. 

At 30, Simons undertook an interior designer and architecture course from RMIT.  Her final thesis was on landscape design.  She combined these studies with raising two daughters and home duties, all on a tight budget eventually qualifying in 1964.  She practiced until 1968 when her husband’s work took the family to Singapore. 

Simons had been invited to join the Institute at its inception but was overseas at the time.  A letter in 1973 to the Secretary of the Institute indicates that she was trying for a third time in 10 years to obtain full membership.  In this letter she expressed her concern regarding the selection of overseas staff for the proposed course at the Canberra College of Advanced Education (now University of Canberra).

“There is another point I should like to mention, I agree with Alastair Knox that to fully import staff from overseas for the new environmental design course ACT is not in the best interests of the country.  Surely it is an exciting chance to establish a truly Australian school of landscape architecture, one of the whole points of the ecological revolution is the preservation, regeneration or establishment of our unique but now fast shrinking environment.  I am afraid that having been in the West, that newcomers do not always have sympathy with the natural environment, I know more than one member of academic staff from overseas who is in a position of influence with students but who sincerely believes that WA is nothing but a desert.  I know there are notable exceptions to this, but surely some sort of balance can be achieved.”  (AILA archives)

Simon’s frustrations with the Institute’s administration were to worsen.  To accompany her application to join as a full member in 1970, then aged 50, Simons sent boxes of slides, used in lectures as well as original plans, reports and lecture notes.  These parcels were lost, causing her significant angst and the production of reams of correspondence in the AILA archives.

Finally in 1975 she became a Corporate Member of the Institute and was appointed a Fellow in 1992. 

Simons was responsible for the Master Plan of the landscape for the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education. Photo: Edwina Richardson.

 

Simons wrote and lectured on environmental design and conservation in Victoria, WA and Tasmania and at European universities in 1977 as well as having extensive experience in landscape architecture through her private practice.  She only part completed the landscape diploma course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, as work commitments in Canberra in 1970 prevented her continuation. 

Her landscape design work included Master Plans for educational institutions such as the Tasmanian College of Advance Education, urban spaces, the native gardens at the Jane Franklin Museum, Hobart and residential design.

Now elderly and disabled, she expressed her reaction to the lauded Federation Square in Melbourne.  She wrote:

“Great plaudits have gone to Federation Square, but not, as a disabled person, from myself.  On a recent visit, my pusher nearly overturned on the broken surface of the ramp to the side entry, nor was there a rail.  Inside I could not get across to one site, because of a large tiled surface with decorative breaks, which made it unsafe for wheels.  The only seats I could find were timber cubes for chairs, balanced on by they young.  As there was no adequate seating with good stability, armrests and backs, I was forced to trudge back to the car and never saw the galleries. Fond memory recalls the old Melbourne Gallery across the road.  The level forecourt with easy access and the foyer lined with comfortable armchairs … this was humane architecture.”  (The Melbourne Age 2003).

A survey of Landscape Architects conducted in 1999 indicates that Phyl Simons work in Victoria and Tasmania influenced a number of contemporary practicing Landscape Architects.

Jane Shepherd (1990) argues that both Phyl Simons and Grace Fraser demonstrated that landscape design was a valid occupation for a conservationist. She says: “As landscape architects, their work in indigenous and ecologically based planting design offers an alternative to northern hemisphere plant materials and design solutions.  Consequently, through their work they have broadened the scope of landscape design for the future.”  (Shepherd 1990, p19).

 

 

Edwina Richardson AILA 2005

 

>> Citation for AILA Fellowship

 

References

AILA Archives. Unpublished.

Aitken, Richard and Looker, Michael (eds) (2002) The oxford companion to Australian gardens  Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Bull, C & Ward, L (2000) ‘In what way influential? The projects, people & events that Landscape Architects consider significant in Australia’ Landscape Australia  2

Shepherd, Jane (1990) ‘Women at work: Melbourne’s 20th century landscape designers’ Trust News July.

Simons, Phyl (2003) 'Not for the disabled'. The Melbourne Age. Letter to the Editor. 22.7.03.

 

Publications by Phyllis Simons

Simons, P (ed) (1996). Tenants no more.  Prowling Tiger Press: Victoria.

Brown, Margaret and Simons, P (1990).  A Port Fairy childhood 1849-1860: the memoirs of Margaret Emily Brown Port Fairy Historical Society: Victoria. (Illustrations by Phyl Simons).

Simons, P (1987)  Historic Tasmanian gardens. Mulini Press: Canberra.

Simons, P (1980) ‘The genesis of Tasmanian gardens’ Garden History Conference. Conference papers. pp 59-62.