Meet Our Team
We place an emphasis on people – our colleagues, our clients, and those we collaborate with. Working together we develop projects that respond to the needs of people and the wider communities in which they are situated.
Colin Burden
Managing Director | BA, DipLA, CMLI
Colin is responsible for the overall management and strategic direction of the company. He has extensive knowledge of education, historic conservation, and cultural landscape sectors gained from 25-years experience in the UK and internationally.
Joining Plincke in 1993, he has established a reputation for intelligently considered design with a strong commitment to stakeholder engagement. This approach has resulted in numerous award winning projects and competitions.
Colin has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Portsmouth School of Architecture and Built Environment, and has advised 3-government task forces including the Urban Green Spaces Task Force, which led to the creation of Cabe Space. He has advised Cabe’s Expert Panel for Education on the value of school grounds and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Dr. Kiril Sharapov
Director | BA (Social Justice & Law), MA (Human Rights), PhD (Politics)
Kiril brings a strong research led approach to the practice in areas such as liveable cities, climate change resilience, social justice, migration, and mobility. As we begin to tackle the big issues posed by climate change and managing the impacts of the climate crisis in our work, we have sought to balance our design-skills with an understanding of key drivers for environmental and social change that Kiril provides. This provides us with an in depth understanding of how good design can encourage long-term solutions that promote community cohesion and resilience and a more circular economy.
Kiril is an Associate Professor of Applied Social Sciences at Edinburgh Napier University and Associate Director at the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science. He oversees our governance in areas such as community wealth building, ethical trading, and our sustainability commitments.
Adam Ash
Studio Leader | BSc (Hons), DipLA, CMLI
Adam leads the team in the Manchester studio and brings 25-years’ experience of working in both the private and public sectors, joining Plincke in 2008. Adam’s expertise includes strategic and detail landscape design for town centres, campuses, living spaces, and regeneration projects; including residential masterplans and delivery projects focussing on high quality and sustainable public realm.
Adam has a track record of managing and realising complex designs and client requirements through planning and to completion on site working with architects, contractors, and other consultants and specialists. This experience also gives Adam an understanding of the management of client and stakeholder expectations to deliver sustainable, robust, and affordable solutions within the external environment.
Gavin Woolston
Studio Leader | BA (Hons), MA, CMLI
Gavin is a Senior Landscape Architect and leads our London studio. He joined Plincke in 2018 and brings 13-years’ experience of professional practice in the UK and North Africa. Gavin has managed projects at all stages from planning to construction delivery and his work exhibits strong design development ability underpinned by a strong creative flair and the skills to present convincing ideas both visually and verbally.
Gavin brings to each project design skills across various scales from private residences to urban masterplans. He is also familiar with EIAs and Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment and with the UK planning system more generally, including biodiversity net gain and the GLA’s Urban Greening Factor calculations.
Stuart Ross
BIM Coordinator / Senior Designer | BA (Hons) Arch, PG Cert Arch, PG Dip LA, AMLI
Stuart has 16-years’ experience and is dual qualified in architecture and landscape design. He leads our BIM team and is responsible for developing our revit modelling capability. Additionally, Stuart has led on many of our high-profile public realm and campus projects with a particular emphasis on multi-disciplinary team working.
Stuart’s technical ability, in both 2 and 3D mediums, means he is ideally suited to lead on large scale hard and soft landscape projects requiring close attention to detail and coordination across disciplines.
Sam Scholes
Landscape Architect / BA (Hons), MA Water Management & Biodiversity, DipLA, AMLI
Sam has an expertise in blue-green infrastructure and biodiversity that stems from a 2-year MA focusing on flood water management and aquatic ecologies. He has led on our projects involving SUDs and watercourse restoration, demonstrating alternative approaches to the traditional engineered methods to tackle flood risk.
Sam joined the practice in 2014 and provides design and technical support to the Urban Parks and Education teams. He has developed a number of Round 1 and 2 lottery applications for park projects, including interpretation strategies.
Henriette Westergaard
Senior Ecologist / Landscape Manager | BSc (Hons) MSc MIEEM CMLI CEnv
Henriette is a qualified Ecologist and Chartered Landscape Architect with over 20 years of professional experience. She provides ecological advice and guidance on a wide range of our projects as our consultant senior ecologist. Ensuring that our clients are meeting their obligations under environmental legislation to research, record, protect, and enhance ecological value within both private and public developments. Increasingly her role has involved achieving biodiversity net gain across new developments.
Henriette has worked with us since 1995 and brings a wealth of practical knowledge to the management of ecologically sensitive landscapes from early planning guidance to long-term management plans.
Dr. Christine Hodgetts
Historic Landscape Advisor | BA PhD
Christine joined Plincke’s cultural landscapes team in 1997 as a historic landscape researcher and conservation advisor. She contributes a critical insight into our portfolio of cultural projects including the preparation of Conservation Management Plans.
She has worked with on some 20-successful Stage 1 & 2 Lottery Fund applications and she is recognised as an expert in the field of historic landscape research and restoration.
As a lecturer in research techniques and palaeography at Warwick University, Christine combines her academic activities with working alongside Plincke’s Cultural / Urban Parks team on a wide range of projects that demand a sensitive approach to restoration or carefully considered intervention.
Rosemary Nesbit
Finance Manager / QA Compliance | ACMA, CGMA
Rosemary is a Senior Accountant with over 20 years’ experience in working in small, large, Venture Capital and Private Equity-backed companies. Her key strength lies in identifying cost saving and change management initiatives and establishing robust and transparent internal controls.
Rosemary joined Plincke in 2019 to strengthen our finance and quality assurance protocols and to support our strategic development and business planning. Rosemary ensures that as a company we are fully compliant with all regulatory requirements and maintains up to date policies that governance procedures. She has continued to help us maintain our ‘strong’ credit rating for credit worthiness among the leading rating agencies, which we have held for more than 20-years.