John F. Collins, 75, a landscape architect and educator

John F. Collins, 75, a landscape architect, urban planner, nurseryman, and educator, died of complications of Parkinson's disease Friday, Aug. 5, at home.

Among Mr. Collins' projects were Schuylkill River Park; the renovation of the Market East corridor with wider sidewalks, bus shelters, trees, and flower boxes; the greenways of Society Hill; and pocket parks throughout Center City.

He first drew plans for Schuylkill River Park in 1965. Forty years later, the 1.2-mile riverfront path was finally opened to pedestrians and bicyclists. To care for early landscaping, Mr. Collins arranged for prison inmates on work-release to cut grass, fertilize, weed, and prune trees along the river.

He insisted that his parks and streetscapes be endowed with a maintenance fund. When the money for Chestnut Street Park, which he designed in 1978, proved insufficient, he and his family tidied it up. "I weeded and mulched and cleaned out the fountain," his son Christopher said.

Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron wrote in 2007 that Mr. Collins did his best work on small "outdoor rooms" like Chestnut Street Park, west of 17th Street. "He could whip up a charming civic nook with a scrap of empty land and some spare city funds," she wrote.

In 1963, early in his career, Mr. Collins designed the greenways in Society Hill, a pedestrian walk winding from St. Peter's Episcopal Church at Third and Pine Streets to Independence National Historical Park.

The walk was conceived by Edmund N. Bacon, then executive director of the city Planning Commission.

Bacon told The Inquirer in 1994 that "the greenways are the glue that holds Society Hill together."

In carrying out his designs, Mr. Collins used only plants, stone, wood, and iron found naturally in the Philadelphia area. "Native plants have been neglected in the craze for the exotic and unusual. They should be the backbone of the planted landscape," he told The Inquirer in 1994.

Besides heading his architectural firm, Delta Group, Mr. Collins was founding chairman in 1988 of the landscape architecture and horticulture department at Temple University. His students and faculty regularly won prizes at the Philadelphia Flower Show.

In 1998, he retired from Temple, which later established the John F. Collins Scholarship in Landscape Architecture in his honor.

Recently, he donated his pencil drawings, which Saffron described as "gorgeous," to the Learning Center on Temple's Ambler campus.

Mr. Collins grew up in Conshohocken with seven siblings. When he was 15, he started a commercial nursery in his parents' backyard, growing trees and potted plants.

He earned a bachelor's degree in 1959 from Pennsylvania State University, where he met his future wife, Sandra Snowdon. When he was a senior, he won $500 in a contest titled "Roses in Home Landscaping."

After graduating, he earned a master's degree in landscape architecture from Harvard University in 1962 and was awarded a fellowship to travel in Italy.

He and his wife married in 1959 and raised a family in Mount Airy. They later moved to four acres in Glenside, where he operated a nursery specializing in indigenous plants.

Mr. Collins lectured and was a visiting studio critic for landscape architecture programs at numerous universities, including one in New Delhi, and held workshops for schoolchildren in Philadelphia.

In addition to his wife of 52 years and son, he is survived by sons John and Matthew; a daughter, Kathleen Hoffman; three sisters; three brothers; and three grandchildren. His brother William F. Collins, a former Inquirer food editor and reporter, died in 1996.

A Funeral Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 10 at Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church, 154 E. Mount Airy Ave.

Donations may be made to the National Parkinson's Foundation, Gift Processing Center, Box 5018, Hagerstown, Md. 21741.