14 LANDSCAPING CASE-STUDY


Chris Beardshaw Scholar Sponsored By Bradstone


Artist's impression of the Tudor Knot garden.


MAY 2010 Royal Opera moves to reinstate landscape


half a kilometre of woven hazel frame and added thousands of native hedge land plants such as Hawthorn, Blackthorn and Sweet Chestnut.” The new hedgerows will be under planted with more cowslips and chalk loving wild flowers again supplied by BWFPs. The Landscape Architects are looking to be finished by late summer to early winter, while the new set building warehouse, currently under construction will take considerably longer. The whole site is expected to open in early 2011. “From the artist’s impression it looks like a huge, graceful arc,” says Clive. “It will be timber clad, which will help it fit into the landscape,


and


Maria Luisa Medina, an up and coming landscape and garden designer from Kent, has been awarded the coveted Chris Beardshaw


Mentoring


Scholarship (CBMS) 2010 at this year’s Malvern Spring Gardening Show. The unique industry accolade is open to amateur,


trainee and semi-


professional landscape designers, and the candidates came from a range of professional backgrounds. Maria will begin her


scholarship immediately by spending a day with the current scholar Paul Hervey-Brookes as he strives to create his Bradstone Biodiversity Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. She will then spend the next year working alongside award winning garden designer and broadcaster Chris Beardshaw, receiving invaluable business advice and technical support from Bradstone and gaining work experience with nurseries and design contractors. Chris Beardshaw said: “The CBMS is about nurturing the horticultural design potential of today into the talented, leading designers of tomorrow. All of the shortlisted candidates displaying their talent at the show have benefitted from a huge amount of support from the CBMS team.


The fact that The Royal Opera House has had to move it’s stage building facilities from their old home within the Olympic Park to a 14 acre site in Purfleet, Essex has created the opportunity to not only build a new, elegant, ultra modern, central working warehouse, but also return the existing buildings and surrounding landscape to their original pre 17th century origins. “This was an old agricultural site with listed buildings” says Clive McDonnell of Clive McDonnell Landscape Design, who has been involved with the site master planning (in conjunction with Nicholas Hare architects) and thereafter the soft landscape design from the start. “A specialist architect is overseeing the refurbishment of the buildings and they will become a café, a restaurant and education facilities. We are doing all the soft landscaping and have appointed Gavin Jones Ltd. as our landscape contractor.” Faced with a derelict walled garden about the size of five


tennis courts, McDonnell worked with historic gardens expert Caroline Holmes who supplied ideas and plant lists. “We’ve reinstated an orchard with semi mature Pear, Mirabelle, Apple and Cherry trees from Germany under planted with cowslips, and we’re intending to plant an “opera” border with perennials


creating a flowing pattern, punctuated by


Agapanthus,


Alliums and Red Hot Pokers to depict musical high notes,” he explains. “The walled garden will also contain a performance space, a Tudor Knot garden and a kitchen garden, where the emphasis will be on growing older vegetables such as white


carrots, which will help supply the restaurant.” Beyond the walled garden the landscape architects are reinstating a down land meadow on a south facing chalk escarpment. Thousands of chalk loving native wild flowers such as Harebells, Clustered Bell Flowers, Hoary Plantains, as well as more cowslips are being grown and supplied by Linda Laxton’s specialist Norfolk nursery, British Wild Flower Plants (BWFPs). “We’re also growing the common Daisy for this project,” she says “as well as Meadow Clary, Vipers Bugloss and Drop Wort.” We collected a large number of seeds two or three years ago at a chalk quarry just down the road from Purfleet, so we’ve plenty of stock.” The finishing and perhaps the


The clustered Bell flower


most important element in the re-created landscape is the installation of traditional hedgerows that evoke the area’s original farmland character. “Previously there were no hedges on site,” says Clive. “We’ve put in


feature a colossal, sweeping green roof.” The Royal Opera


House


Production Park at Purfleet is being developed by the Thurrock Thames Gateway Development Corporation and is funded by a partnership made up of the Development Corporation the East of England Development Agency,


the Arts Council of


England (East), Thurrock Borough Council, the Royal Opera House, the National Skills Academy for Creative and Cultural Skills and Liberty International.


British Wild Flower Plants Click here to request literature


The Hoary Plantain


CLICK HERE TO REQUEST LITERATURE


CLICK HERE TO REQUEST LITERATURE


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