BSLA Fieldbook BSLA 2015 Spring Fieldbook | Page 46

BSLA / MEMBER CAROL JOHNSON, FASLA ALL AROUND THE WORLD T o introduce my career in landscape architecture I probably should begin with my childhood. My mother was a school teacher and my father a lawyer. I was born and raised in New Jersey which made it easy for my mother to take my brother and me to the Olmsted Parks and museums in New York City. We also vacationed on the beautiful island in Massachusetts, Martha’s Vineyard, and in the green mountains of Vermont. My mother and father were serious gardeners and I helped them with weeding and composting. During World War II my mother took me to a rally in Madison Square Garden in support of the brave Chinese who were being invaded by the Japanese. After several local politicians, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek spoke. She was so intelligent and well spoken that I decided I wanted to go to her College in Massachusetts, Wellesley. I applied and was accepted and had four years on the wonderfully beautiful Wellesley campus. 44 BSLA After that I worked in a plant nursery, New England Nursery, I loved working there rooting plants, digging them, pruning them, and selling them to gardeners. Some of my college classmates had friends who were studying at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. They came out to the nursery and encouraged me to apply to the landscape architecture department at Harvard, which I did and was accepted. Studying at Harvard was a great experience. The professors all encouraged me and told me I was doing good work which made me try even harder. When I got my degree in landscape architecture the economy was in recession. I couldn’t find a job in a landscape architecture firm but I did get one in a firm of engineers. I worked there for a year on schools, roads and civic centers. Then the Gropius firm, The Architects Collaborative, had an opening for a landscape architect and I took it. I worked there for a year on school and urban development. After a year working at TAC, I was getting landscape projects on my own from architects who had been classmates or who had worked with me. I left and founded my own firm. Women were not designing major projects then but, because I had worked at TAC, architects who needed a landscape architect already knew me. For the first five years I worked from my apartment on projects for architects, private gardens, housing developments and schools.