David Lambert, MA, IHBC, FRSA

David is an acknowledged expert on the conservation of historic parks and gardens. He has been influential in the development of heritage policy and is also a leading authority on researching the history of parks and gardens.

After a first-class degree in English from Exeter College, Oxford, David went on to teach briefly at Clifton College in Bristol before becoming a Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies at the University of York. He then became Conservation Officer for the Garden History Society and oversaw the development of the GHS as a statutory consultee in the planning process.

In 1993, he and Hazel Conway wrote Public Prospects, one of the first reports to draw attention to the crisis in public parks, and he has been closely involved in the renaissance of urban parks over the following twenty years. He served as special adviser to three House of Commons Select Committee inquiries and for many years was a member of the National Trust’s Gardens Panel; in addition he has served on Historic England’s Advisory Committee, and on advisory panels for Historic Royal Palaces and the World Monuments Fund.From 1995 to 2017 he worked closely with the Heritage Lottery Fund (now the National Lottery Heritage Fund) on the the development and implementation of its grants for public parks,  as a panel member, external advisor, monitor and mentor on over a hundred park restoration projects. He is a member of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation and a Fellow of the RSA.

He has lectured and published widely on the subject of historic parks and gardens. His publications include The Park Keeper; Parks and Gardens: a researcher’s guide and War Memorial Parks and Gardens for English Heritage.  He has written the Perambulator column in the The London Gardener for many years,  Until 2021 he was a trustee of the Gardens Trust and a member of its conservation committee.

In 2018 he was rudely awakened to the facts about climate change and the crisis in biodiversity loss.  He reduced his work for the Parks Agency to focus on activism with Extinction Rebellion, which culminated in 2021 with being one of six people tried for criminal damage to Shell’s HQ in London, a trial which ended after two weeks with the jury finding the group not guilty.  These days he tries to balance PA work with local community development and resilience, and with speaking and writing about horticulture and the climate and ecological crisis.

Recent work includes:

  • A ‘Provocation’ for Hampton Court /Historic Royal Palaces on policies for the climate and ecological emergency, 2023

  • Bodnant Garden, 5-year review of Conservation Management Plan for the National Trust, 2023

  • History of Rowland Brothers Funeral Directors, 2023

  • Southside House, Wimbledon, history and assessment of the garden, 2022

  • Lecture on gardens and the climate emergency, Glasnevin Botanic Garden, 2022

  • National Botanic Garden of Wales, Management and Maintenance Plan, 2021

  • Castlewellan Arboretum, Northern Ireland, consultancy advice on development of NLHF bid, 2020

  • Harewood, Conservation Management Plan for Harewood Trust, with Haworth Tompkins 2020

  • Public parks and the response to Covid-19, with CFP, 2020

Stewart Harding, BA (Hons), PhD, MBE

Stewart founded the Parks Agency in 2002 to be both a consultancy specialising in the conservation and management of public parks, and also a not-for-profit campaigning body. This came after a four-year stint at the Heritage Lottery Fund when he set up and ran its pioneering a grants programme for urban parks. In that four years he helped disburse £185m to some 200 different park restoration projects. He had been headhunted from the Countryside Commission which he had joined in 1990 and ran its Task Force Trees grant programme for storm-damage repair to historic parks and gardens in the south-west.

As a mature student at Bristol Polytechnic in the 1980s, he set up the Stoke Park Restoration Trust to curtail proposed development of the 18th century Thomas Wright landscape and to restore the lake, gates and memorials. After receiving a first class honours degree he developed a unique action-research methodology for his PhD in the conservation of historic landscapes attached to former asylums and hospitals. He also helped to found the Avon Gardens Trust, serving both as its Conservation Officer and its Chairman.

Stewart retired to his allotment and his beautiful garden in 2016 but has remained the Parks Agency’s honorary consultant and guiding star - his rage at the destruction of parks as public goods remains undimmed, as does his love of their beauty. In 2023 he was awarded an MBE in the King’s Birthday Honours ‘for services to heritage and park conservation’.