Origins of the Diploma of Landscape Architecture - Charlie Challenger

“What landscape could be”

Charlie Challenger set up the first landscape architecture course in New Zealand. He ran the two-year post-graduate Diploma in Landscape Architecture (DipLA) from 1969 until he retired in 1982.

Charlie was an Englishman who had trained, worked and lectured in horticulture in Great Britain. In 1956, he immigrated to New Zealand with his wife, to take up a lectureship in horticulture at Lincoln College. In 1962, he succeeded John Glazebrook as Head of the Horticulture Department. He began planning a course in landscape architecture but, as no one was qualified to teach the subject, he travelled back to the UK in 1966 and completed a degree in landscape architecture at Newcastle University in 1968.

Hear Charlie recall how he discovered ‘what landscape could be’.