Darwina L. Neal
Darwina Neal, FASLA, HM.IFLA, F.US/ICOMOS, retired as chief of cultural resource preservation services for the National Park Service’s National Capital Region in 2009. Previously, she was chief of design services. During her career, she designed, advised on, and reviewed a wide range of parks, monuments, and memorials throughout the Washington, D.C, metropolitan area, served as a consultant for landscape projects at the White House and Camp David, and coordinated the design and construction of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove. Ms. Neal has been active at all levels of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), was the first woman to be ASLA National President, is an ASLA Fellow, and has received both the ASLA President's Medal and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASLA Potomac chapter. She has served as the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) Americas Region Vice President, chair of the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award Nomination Committee, and she is an IFLA honorary member. Ms. Neal is the treasurer for the U.S. Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS); president of the National Preservation Institute; and has judged numerous local and national planning, landscape architecture, and historic preservation awards programs. She received a B.S.L.A. from Pennsylvania State University (PSU) in 1965, was the first woman recipient of an Alumni Achievement Award from the PSU College of Arts and Architecture Alumni Society, and is a 2017 Alumni Fellow.
Statement: I don't remember when I first met Cornelia, because I've known her for so long, seeing and spending time with her at ASLA and IFLA meetings in a variety of locations in the United States and other countries, where she was variously a speaker, attendee, and award-winner. Wherever it was, however, she was always warm and welcoming and always had time to talk, quite often at meetings that included young woman landscape architects who were eager to learn from her.
This exemplifies that Cornelia is a role model for both women and men landscape architects of all ages because not only is she ageless and young at heart, but her practice also reflects principles that all landscape architects should follow. She has constantly learned and applied sustainable and environmentally nurturing practices in her work, lectures, and writing, and she designed early examples of roof gardens and used native plant materials specially grown for her projects.
Although her contributions and influence on environmental design in North America have been recognized through the highest international and national awards in landscape architecture and honorary doctorates from five leading universities in the United States and Canada, she practices the principles of "move along, bring along" for younger practitioners...always learning and always teaching...as well as collaborating with and teaching other leading design professionals. Thus I am pleased to support an award in Cornelia's name, one that recognizes another landscape architect whose work demonstrates the principles that she has espoused in her life and her practice.