The Parks Agency was set up in 2002 by two of the best-known and experienced individuals in the parks world, Stewart Harding and David Lambert.  Their work on parks and gardens began in the 1980s when David joined Stewart’s campaign to save Stoke Park in Bristol from development.

Over the decades they worked together on listing the historic landscapes of Avon and on storm damage grants for parks and gardens, then with the National Lottery in the 1990s when Stewart was employed to design the urban parks grants scheme, and David acted as a panel member and external adviser.   

As The Parks Agency they were involved in numerous park restoration schemes.  They carried out research projects for a diverse range of bodies both national and local, wrote many Conservation Management Plans and used their profile on numerous campaigns, including raising awareness not just of urban parks, but also of allotments, cemeteries, hospital landscapes and post-war twentieth-century landscapes.  It has been quite a journey.

Stewart hung up his mighty pen in favour of the fork and hoe on his allotment in 2018, although his insight and rage remained the PA’s guiding star.  In 2023, he was awarded an MBE ‘for services to heritage and park conservation’.

 For a lifelong outsider, it is wonderful recognition – he says he feels like Father Ted getting the Golden Cleric award.  We’re biased here, but what we think it’s no more than he deserves.   And while he is no longer using his pen to wage war with the government over parks, he continues to write, most recently The Long Walk to Glastonbury, his cult-hit memoir of exploring ancient Albion fifty years ahead of the present folk-revival.

David became involved with Extinction Rebellion and its campaign of civil disobedience.  He is the only garden historian ever to be tried for criminal damage and was proud to be part of the Shell 7 who were found not guilty by a jury in 2021.  He still carries out historical research on historic landscapes when asked but now he writes and talks mainly about the climate and ecological emergency, and is increasingly devoted to environmental and community projects in his home town of Stroud.