Tutor in Landscape Architecture Department - Jan Woodhouse

“They used to call me ‘mother duck’”

The workload in the landscape architecture department was quite onerous because, as well as teaching the postgraduate DipLA class, the lecturers had to teach introductory papers about landscape to DipHort and DipParks students. Charlie Challenger decided a course tutor was needed. He appointed Jan Woodhouse (see earlier audio) to the role, a position she held from 1975 to 1983.

Jan describes what her role as tutor involved.

So Johnny asked you to go and work with him? Yes. He actually said, Would you like to come and work as a tutor here, and I must have looked bemused by it, he said, Well, he called a spade a bloody spade. And that's what I need. Instead, I need you to choose her. The diploma horticulture students, and they mainly that diploma park students. And he said, I need somebody who can actually get on with them and get through to them. And he said, You might also tutor the degree students, and you may also work on campus, you know, design, because that was part of what he was doing from time to time. And so in 1975, I joined the Landscape Architecture department of Lincoln, and my role involved exactly that. And it was actually it was actually developing tutorials, and taking them. And so I did things like, you know, right, from graphics, the graphics, right through to, you know, a lot of stuff outside of practical stuff, a lot of plant Id work, take them out and say, This is how you draw. These are the sort of principles let's go out and find examples of symmetry or, you know, all the words you use like that. sequencing, you know, those sorts of things. So we would go out, you know, they'd be drawing form line colour texture thing, so they were getting a basic understanding of landscape architecture, all the way through, and there were packs there were the parks, packed or five packs students, and they used to call me Mother Duck. They used to follow me and align around the campus with their things. They were Mother Duck's ducklings with their wings flapping. And there were about yeah there were up to 50 diploma horticulture students, which was a lot. I think I did one tutorial with them a week something and most of them weren't interested. So the park students were always interested. And well, it had to be really, most people quite a lot of time with them.