Rob Rieke
I’d been living in a little village at the side of Milton Keynes and was aware that this new city was being built.
In the 1970s there was a lot of unemployment and the winter of discontent.
Rob revisiting some of the trees he helped plant in his teenage years.
As a teenager I always saw MK as a place of opportunity for me. At the age of 16 I got a job as a landscape trainee with the then development corporation. I really felt part of developing and building a city in a positive way. It was quite cold at times planting the trees. They were on big bare slopes and we used to call it the windy city as the wind blew across and there weren’t many hills to hide us. But we knew we were adding value to the city and the trees have given it character, cover and depth.
“It’s lovely not just to create the landscape but then to use it and introduce other people to it.”
50 years on I’m very proud. It’s quite unique that I’ve had the fortune to be involved with a city from design to implementation of the landscape. To be involved with planting trees that were only a metre tall and see them now as thriving 7 metre tall trees gives me great satisfaction. I’m a keen cyclist and a love cycling round the redways of Milton Keynes. It’s lovely not just to create the landscape but then to use it and introduce other people to it.