1909 - 1984
In a 1984 edition of Landscape Architectural Review, an early journal produced by landscape architects of the CSLA, editor Donald Graham describes Ned Wood as “a modest man with piercing eyes”, who had a firm belief that “Ottawa, as the nation’s capital, deserved a landscape befitting it.” And indeed, Ned Wood was instrumental in shaping the outstanding environmental character of the National Capital Region today.
Wood was a native of Ottawa and graduated from the Ontario Agricultural College (1929) before heading to Harvard. During his student years, he worked on the design of golf courses from Banff to Jamaica, and then did archaeological work on colonial landscapes such as Williamsburg, Virginia.
In 1934 and just out of Harvard, Ned Wood was made the Director of Project Design for Canada’s Federal District Commission (later transformed into the National Capital Commission). He was the first landscape architect to work full-time for the FDC.
Wood initially focused on the grounds of Canada’s government buildings, but his expertise was far wider reaching. He had studied parks in America and England, and had done post graduate parkway planning at Cornell. It was Wood, said future NCC landscape director, Don Pettit who “brought the National Capital out of the Victorian era with its bric-a-brac, its bits and pieces. He looked comprehensively at the Capital and its landscape.”
In the 40s, Ottawa was entering an era of rapid change. At the invitation of Prime Minister Mackenzie King, French architect and planner Jacques Greber was preparing a Masterplan for Ottawa. The FDC was to realize the ambitious plan, with Ned Wood now its Chief Landscape Architect.
Wood proved to be as gifted in administration as design. Parks, open spaces and parkways were under his purview, and he assembled an outstanding field staff to bring Greber’s vision to life. He often consulted directly with Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who became an honorary member of the CSLA.
After the war, Wood twice served as President of the CSLA (1948-50; 1958-60). Meanwhile, the scope of the NCC was enlarged to include both sides of the Ottawa River (some 2330 square kilometres), then doubled again in 1958. Wood worked with the natural ecology of the region. The strong simplicity of his designs included such visionary achievements as laying out the region-wide parkway system, to establishing magnificent vistas in the Gatineau Hills, to creating formal gardens within the city. (Ned Wood designed Ottawa’s renowned tulip beds.) Vincent Massey Park (late 1950s), was a pilot project in developing a family park, and Wood led the collaborative construction of the modernist Garden of the Provinces and Territories, designed by Donald Graham.
Wood retired in 1966. The CSLA named him to the Council of Fellows in its inaugural year (1964), and made him a life member in 1969.
Sources
Papers relating to Wood’s work (1942-84) are held in the Frances McLeod Blue Collections in the University of Guelph Archives, including Wood’s correspondence with Prime Minister Mackenzie King.
Image Sources
1. Tulips at Dows Lake. May 1958. Credit: Library and Archives Canada / E999914000
Ned Wood laid out Ottawa’s tulip beds, after Canada first received 20,500 tulip bulbs from Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, in appreciation of her refuge in Canada during the war.
2. Ned Wood (4th left) with Prime Minister John Diefenbaker (3rd left), opening the Garden of the Provinces and Territories, September 1962.
3. + 4. Letters from Prime Minister Mackenzie King to Ned Wood. University of Guelph Archives, Frances Blue Collection.
5. Sketch of Ned Wood, from Canadian Landscape Architect 15.
