Work continues to develop New River Head into the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, set to open next spring.

We speak to Sue Amos, our landscape designer about her approach towards planting for our visitors and the fascinating plants that had taken root at the site.

Sue, can you tell us about your work?

I’m a Landscape Designer, deeply rooted in community work and mostly focused on plants and planting. I love to connect people to plants, helping them find an access point that switches on their own enthusiasm and interest – be it growing, making, drawing or cooking. There’s something for everyone!

My career has been very varied, designing large gardens and private landscapes, but also working with people to create public spaces that can be accessed by all. I designed and built a community garden in Peckham. This really allowed me to understand how different designing from the bottom up is. You need to involve people at all levels, and create gardens where interaction is a given, as people sow from seed, maintain and develop, and often eat the results. Low-tech approaches continued at Global Generation, where as Head of Gardens, I co-designed gardens for temporary sites. We always worked with hard surfaces, innovating with building waste, recycled and repurposed materials. Throughout the process of garden making, we brought in volunteers to learn new skills and build community.

What do you find interesting or exciting about this project?

On my first walkabout of New River Head, I was struck by the variety of weeds that had blown in and taken root, like Pellitory of the Wall and Buddleia. It’s likely they arrived through the varied transport networks and canals of old industry. Plants can say so much about a site: its terrain, soils, aspect, even climate. It also speaks to how nature will always try and reclaim hard surfaces to create niches for wildlife in unlikely places. 

As someone who trained as an artist and maker, a garden for illustration is such an appealing concept, full of opportunities to draw, make colour, discover texture and tools for drawing. It’s exciting that it will be a space for creativity and learning, and plants will play a big role in that.

How have you approached the task of opening up this historic site?

The site's long connection with water is still so vivid, with pumping machinery, gurgling noises and even the old weedy willows growing in the debris giving a hint of the wild planting found along the old waterways and aqueducts. Although it's such an urban site, I want the planting to have a breezy feel, fluid like water and a little bit wild. The site is so dry, with limited planting depths, so I’ve adapted plants to drier conditions but still focused on trying to capture something natural and relaxed that will draw people in to look more closely at the detail.

Tell us something about illustration.

As a creative child with a vivid imagination, illustration opened up many worlds for me. Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies drew me deep into nature, showing me how to identify the wild plants around me and encouraging me to look at the details, differences and characters of plants. I still use my Concise British Flora in Colour, beautifully illustrated by W Keble Martin to compare specimens in the same plant families, inspired by the detail and depth of the drawings.