Les Baker Email & Phone Number

While a student, Les undertook a summer’s internship at Jones and Jones Landscape Architects in Seattle, USA. Here he enjoyed working on projects as diverse as The Trans Alaskan Pipeline and Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo.Starting work after university with Derek Lovejoy and Partners, he worked on the detailed design of The Festival Square - the first public square to be designed and built in Edinburgh for 100 years.Following a study tour to Italy and a summer helping create neighbourhood parks in a poor district of Athens, Les returned to Edinburgh to set up the Lothian Urban Wildlife Group. This was the first of these pioneering groups to be set up in Scotland and one of the first three to be set up in the whole of Britain. The objective was to bring wildlife and the natural world into the urban centre of the city, whilst providing young people with training in conservation and landscape construction. After a family move to the South West of England, Les worked for two years at Janie Thomas Associates as Senior Landscape Architect. He was then asked in 1990 to help establish Landmark Environmental Consultants – the first ecological and landscape design consultancy to be set up by a County Wildlife Trust in Britain. As an Executive and Main Board Director, Les had responsibility for the creative output and design quality of the Practice. Projects ranged from new public parks and nature reserves to historic landscapes, sensitive urban sites and major landscape and development strategies.In 2002 Les set up Reckless Orchard in order to combine his expertise in landscape design, ecological landscapes and community initiatives with his life-long passion for productive landscapes, orchards and gardens.Reckless Orchard aims use the art of landscape design to create beautiful, useful and thought-provoking landscapes that inspire people and help them to connect again with the natural world.

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  Priory Grammar School For Boys, Shrewsbury, Uk