John joined LUC in 1988 as a landscape manager with an MSc in Landscape Ecology, Design and Maintenance from Wye College after previous roles as a research scientist and later as an exploration geophysicist with major projects in Africa and the Middle East.

His landscape roles have varied from supervising grounds maintenance contracts, through tree surveys, open space audits, writing management plans for urban and rural sites (including historic parks), and research into planning controls over agriculture and forestry development.

John worked on a series of influential projects in his career, including the following:

• The Tamsin Trail around Richmond Park, a project started in 1992, with the initial build completed in 1995, to provide an environmentally and heritage-sensitive path around the perimeter of Richmond Park which could be used by both pedestrians and cyclists.  John’s initial role was to act as the LA on the construction of the path but he then managed all the subsequent related extensions, reviews, refreshes etc. up to 2015.
• The initial Trees in Towns project in 1991 to 1995 to analyse tree cover in 67 towns in England to assess what trees were growing where and how they were being managed.
• The first Dark Skies project for CPRE in 2000 to use satellite imagery to analyse and present maps of the light emitted over Britain and where if anywhere dark skies could be experienced. A project that has now been followed through and expanded by the GIS team.
• The Wangari Maathai project from 2010 to 2012 where LUC provided the landscape input to the winning entry in an international design competition for a building and landscape on the edge of Nairobi in Kenya to celebrate and teach the principles expounded by Wangari Maathai, the winner of the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in setting up the Green Belt Movement to put into practice the principles of sustainable economic, social and environmental development.
• Access improvement in Isabella Plantation from 2010 to 2015 where John led a mixed consultancy design team charged with making access easier for a wider range of visitors to and within the Isabella Gardens, a woodland garden in Richmond Park famous for its spring displays of rhododendrons and azaleas.

In addition, he was responsible for helping to develop and manage LUC’s IT system until 2021. During that time we expanded the use of computers into all aspects of our work, built networks initially within offices and later linking all offices and allowing links from outside the offices (which later proved useful for dealing with Covid restrictions).

He had a major role in introducing CAD in 1991, the use of GIS in 1991, then buying our own GIS facilities when it became financially viable in 1996, and generally making sure that LUC kept up to date with the benefits computers and their applications could offer for the type of work we do for our clients, and in helping us manage (computer-based accounts package in 1994) and administer LUC.

Undoubtedly, we are sad to lose John's positive, hardworking and extremely capable presence in LUC, but we are even more excited to see him sail off to his well-deserved retirement.

Happy retirement, John! LUC will miss you.