Design for Outdoor Recreation

Dr Simon Bell is a forester-turned-landscape architect. He is interested in aspects of the wider landscape, such as forests, rural and wild landscapes as well as the peri-urban zone. This includes planning and design aspects, forest landscape aesthetics, urban forestry, urban blue spaces, outdoor recreation and the health and well-being benefits of exposure to nature in such areas. Accessibility by people from a range of backgrounds to such landscapes has also been a feature of his research and practice.

Simon was educated in forestry at The University of Wales, Bangor (now Bangor University), landscape architecture at the University of Edinburgh and took his doctorate in landscape architecture at the Estonian University of Life Sciences where he is also Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Landscape Architecture.

Before academia Simon worked for 20 years for the Forestry Commission, ending his time there as Chief Landscape Architect. He has worked all over the UK and also extensively on forestry design projects and as a trainer in Canada and the USA as well as Ireland, Finland and the Baltic States. When practicing privately as a landscape architect he worked on many forest landscape design plans for the Forestry Commission and for private forestry companies in Scotland. He worked on the regeneration of the Caledonian Forest in Glenfeshie for Glenfeshie Estate in the Cairngorms National Park and designing extensive new forests such as Victory wood in Kent, Heartwood Forest in Hertfordshire (also incorporating a native tree arboretum), Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Wood in Leicestershire and the First World War Commemorative woodland in Surrey all for the Woodland Trust.

He is a Professor in the Latvian University of Life Sciences as well as having been Visiting Professor at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. For several years has been a Visiting Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology in Harbin, China.

From 2012 to 2018 Simon was President of the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS). This body represents the interest of landscape architecture educators and researchers, holds a prestigious annual conference, presents awards for teaching and research and owns the Journal of Landscape Architecture.