"People don't often consider that their home territory or their village, is actually landscape. [They think] the landscape is 'out there' – it's the forest and it's the nature," says Professor Simon Bell as we speak during a break in the 2024 LE:NOTRE Landscape Forum at Tartu's Estonian University of Life Sciences (Eesti Maaülikool).

It may seem like a subtle distinction, but, as Bell, who is chair of landscape architecture at the university's institute of agricultural and environmental sciences, points out, it can also make a big difference.

In 2018, Estonia became the 39th member state to sign up to the Council of Europe's Landscape Convention. Designed to support the protection, management and planning of the landscape, as well as promoting public awareness and participation, the convention clearly defines landscape as the entire territory of its member states.

However, when it came to the practical application of the convention in Estonia, "understanding that everything together is 'landscape,' was a bit of a problem," Bell explains.

"It made it a little bit more difficult for people to get their heads around the idea of the landscape convention and what it meant. So, what we mean by landscape, how that works, and who's going to look after the convention, who's going to be responsible for it. In part, that's because the word is so connected with nature, as opposed to in other countries, where it means something visual."

The thinking was that Estonia has certain landscape protection areas, and that the convention applied predominantly to them, Bell says. "But they are nature protection areas really, and so that's how we dealt with it (in Estonia - ed.)."

But in fact, landscape is far more than just that.

"It's everywhere that isn't protected – that's what you have to deal with, not just the good areas, but the poor areas, the poor quality areas. They are the ones that need to be enhanced, improved and restored," Bell tells me.

Everything that can be considered part of the bioeconomy too, comes from the landscape, he explains. "Whether it's trees or crops, animals or health and wellbeing or recreation or beauty and so on. It's all dependent on the landscape and the quality of the landscape, so that's the crucial, fundamental starting point."

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It's a Friday afternoon when I arrive at the Estonian University of Life Sciences to catch the end of this year's Landscape Forum. Seventy teachers, students and practitioners of landscape architecture and other connected disciplines have all been in Tartu and South Estonia working on new ways to tackle some of the region's most pressing landscape-related issues.

And they haven't come all this way just to spend time sat around listening to each other talk their way through PowerPoint presentations.

As Bell highlights, not only are discussion and collaborative work at the heart of the Landscape Forum, but so too are targeted fieldtrips, which enable the participants to get a close look at local landscapes and find out first hand about the issues affecting them.

That insight is key to understanding how to develop new plans for the region.

"[For many of the participants], it's their first time in Tartu, so they've had a really good first impression, a new impression," explains Bell. "And that's one of the strengths of this. You have people getting that first impression of a place that we (who live here – ed.) know so well, and they spot things that sometimes we don't."

"All that field activity really enriches it because people got to know the landscapes in a bit of detail, experience something, and combine that with the map information and all the other kind of information [they had]."

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While the 2024 forum's overarching theme is "Landscape as the Container of the Bioeconomy," the participants have also been split into six groups. Each one focuses on a different sub-field and its relevance to the local area – from waterscapes to forests, fibrescapes (production of plant and animal fibers) to foodscapes, recreation and nature tourism to Tartu as a city of active transport.

No matter what their specialization, however, when considering any kind of changes to the local landscape, they all have the same underlying priority – community engagement and working with the locals to ensure life carries on in the same way it has done for generations.

And, as Kertu Vuks, head of the City of Tartu's urban design department, who was also in attendance at the forum tells me, that goal is also crucial for the local government.

"Engagement with local people is extremely important because this is our people-made city," Vuks says as we chat over coffee after the forum. "We have to live together as humans, but also together with nature, while keeping in mind too that in some areas of Tartu we have the city, but we have also the countryside and it's a challenge to put them together."

There are many different ways of fostering that engagement. Among the most cutting edge in evidence is the use of AI tools to generate images on the spot, which immediately show how potential changes to an area might look. That's especially useful when discussing changes to the city's streetscapes.

"It's a really flexible system for public participation," Professor Simon Bell tells me. "People can say: 'We prefer our street with no cars and maybe with a bike lane or some plants. What would that look like?' And then, out it pops."

Armed with the knowledge those visuals provide, people can then give a much more informed opinion about whether the proposed changes are worth pursuing, or if it might be better to think again.

"We're learning to use some of these tools based on the idea of landscape and democracy," Bell says. That means, "people being able to participate and come up with what it is that they're interested in."

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The participants soon discover, too, that for many Estonians, the landscape is also seen as a rich source of both food and recreation, with people regularly heading to the forest to pick berries, collect mushrooms and more.

"Yeah, that was something, which was slightly unusual for some," Bell says. "That (in Estonia) they have this everyman's right. This idea of going out and picking mushrooms and berries is so pervasive or popular or traditional, that people take it for granted as an activity that they just do," he explains, adding that this provided fruitful ground for discussion.

Another important local factor to consider is Estonia's changing seasons and the impact that has on how the landscape here is used.

"Apart from the people from Latvia and Lithuania, who have a bit of a similar climate, for many the contrast between the winter and the summer and then off seasons is so dominant and so strong," he says. "It was really exciting for them to understand that, even though they haven't experienced the winter here, of course."

"But to see that and to see how different it is and how the activities switch between the seasons, that's something that's very new for people, again, but which we take for granted."

It seems clear that the combination of local knowledge with fresh perspectives offered by experts from further afield can only be beneficial for the future development of Tartu and its surroundings.

"It's really nice to see how different people from really different backgrounds see our city, and see the challenges of the city," said Kertu Vuks, head of the City of Tartu's urban design department.

"Of course, depending on their background, they maybe don't have all the information about the Estonian system or some legislative principles that we have to keep in mind," Vuks added.

"But overall, I think that they've captured really nicely all these problematic parts and the solutions [they suggested] were something to think about. It shows that they see the challenges in quite a similar way to how we do."

After seeing what the participants came up with, Vuks says the next step is to take some of those ideas back to the city council, where they will be discussed with a view to potentially being implemented in the future.

"All the topics that were presented here are equally important for us as a city. Starting from mobility and ending with the water and ecological system of the city. I really enjoyed the presentations and I really, really liked the presentation about Tiksoja forest," Vuks says. "It was artistic and nicely put together some different perspectives."

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More information about the 2024 LE NOTRE Landscape Forum is available here.

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