Thomas Hayton Mawson (May 5, 1861–November 14, 1933), better known as T.H. Mawson, was a British garden designer, landscape architect, and town planner. Mawson was born at Scorton, Lancashire. He left school at age 12 to make a living, first in the building trade in Lancaster, then at a London nursery. In the 1880s he moved back north, where he and two brothers started the Lakeland Nursery in Windermere. The firm became sufficiently successful so that he was then able to turn his attentions to garden design. Mawson's first commission was a local property, Graythwaite Hall, and even then reflected his hallmark blend of architecture and planting. He then designed the gardens at Langdale Chase, Holehird, Brockhole, and Holker Hall around the turn of the century. In time Mawson designed gardens throughout Britain, and in Europe and Canada. In 1908 he won a competition to lay out the Peace Palace gardens at the Hague. He also advised on the development of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in America. One of Mawson's more noted plans was for the city of Calgary, Canada. Mawson's vision, had it been implemented, would have changed what was then a dusty prairie town, into a city of the City Beautiful movement. In 1923 he became president of the Town Planning Institute, and in 1929 the first president of the Institute of Landscape Architects. Mawson died at Applegarth, Hest Bank, Lancaster, Lancashire, on November 14, 1933, and is buried in Bowness Cemetery within a few miles of some of his best gardens.
Selected writings
- The Art and Craft of Garden Making, 1st edn 1900, 5th edn (recommended), 1926.
- Civic Art 1911
- The Life and Work of an English Landscape Architect, 1927
