LANDSCAPE DESIGN
and to be watered (except, for example, a cactus), and weeds need to be kept in check. The key is to select plants such as ornamental grasses, herbaceous and native pollinators, that provide seasonal colour, texture scent, and seasonal interest even in winter. These don’t mind being left over winter, and can be cropped down in one operation just before the next growing season. A nice green lawn is always a welcome
feature, but does need mowing. Too much grass just to fill in space as ‘left over landscaping’ is not beneficial to the appearance of a scheme or its ecological value, and may just lead to the place looking unkempt, simply because the space has become a nuisance to maintain. An area for wildflower grass has its place, particularly around the boundaries, and in any open public space that is very good for the biodiversity of the site. Intensive formal garden or municipal
park-type planting that needs constant pruning, and bedding planting that needs tending daily, are generally less suitable for mental healthcare settings.
Hard landscape, furniture, and artworks This is a detailed subject area, and covers a wide range of elements – including shelters, screens, walls, and outdoor lighting, but essentially the use of light-coloured paving helps lift the mood, and is better for differentiating changes in surface or level than dark surfacing. Outdoor furniture needs to be ergonomically designed, with safety paramount, which often entails it being fixed, as well as softly shaped, using warm timbers or colourful pre-formed polyethylene, often using recycled materials. Integrating artworks into a scheme is a great way of personalising and humanising spaces, and encourages conversation and engagement within both the internal and external environment of the hospital.
Iteriad
Previously both landscape architect directors at a large multidisciplinary practice, Karen Howell (pictured) and her husband, Paul Taylor, set up their own practice, Iteriad, in 2012, with the specific objective of designing places that evoke a special ‘Spirit of place’, placing people at the heart of everything it does. New director, Matthew Speight, joined the business in early 2021.
Iteriad means ‘journey’ (the word, pronounced ‘I-ter-iad’, is based on a poem written by John Ruskin when he visited the Lake District as a young boy, the lasting impression it left him, and the influence of this landscape on his life to aspire to greater things as his journey through life). Karen Howell said: “With our experience of healthcare design, the journey has an even greater meaning. We studied mindfulness, and learned how mind-calming, with the opportunity to be immersed in the landscape, makes a difference for healing our minds. We take our clients and the people we design for along our project journeys with us.
“We gained our first healthcare experience in the early 2000s. This included leading the landscape masterplanning and delivery of the Queen Elizabeth Acute Hospital at the Birmingham University campus, together with the design of the external landscape environment of a new mental health village, all on the one site. We also led the landscape team responsible for the masterplanning and concept design of the new Children’s Health Park at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool.
“We specialise in the masterplanning and design of the external environments of major healthcare and mental healthcare hospitals and facilities. Our healthcare and mental healthcare portfolio under Iteriad has strengthened to cover the specialist design of outdoor spaces for acute healthcare, CAMHS, dementia and older adult care, acute mental healthcare, learning disabilities, and low secure, medium secure, and psychiatric intensive care.”
30 AUGUST 2022 | THE NETWORK
Intensive formal garden or municipal park-type planting that needs constant pruning, and bedding planting that needs tending daily, are generally less suitable for mental healthcare settings
Management and maintenance The task of the landscape architect is to design the hard and soft landscape of the outdoor spaces for low maintenance, and to be as robust as possible. This is a challenge when using living plants to provide a full sensory experience and to bring in nature. Every plant needs a certain amount of maintenance, but good design utilises types of planting mixes and techniques to help reduce it where possible in the longer term. In the early days of establishment,
however, when a scheme has just been planted and handed over to the building occupier, the plants still need to be tended regularly to keep them healthy, and to grow in the correct habitat so that they spread evenly together to cover the soil surface, and eventually suppress the weeds.
Engagement, involvement, and being ‘hands-on’ Talking to and engaging with the stakeholders (staff, managers, patients, and service-users) during the early design stages is very important, so that they can be involved in informing the development of the design of their external environment. Engagement sessions need to be interactive and interesting to focus the attention of the service-users and patients. Often long ‘wishlists’ are presented to the design team, i.e. the ‘Can we have?’ approach. This means that the design team needs to ascertain and extract the information in a meaningful way as to what
is considered essential, with input from the clinical and estates teams. This also needs to be balanced against affordability. Service-users and patients need hands-on engagement once the building is occupied. Outdoor spaces need to include areas for activities, and particularly recreation and sport, as well as horticulture and growing gardens to be included where space allows. To be ‘hands on’, and to have something to do, is therapeutic and good for the healing process. Learning about and connecting with nature is one of the keys to effective treatment for good mental health. Meanwhile, active engagement with
patients, service-users, and staff, on all projects is one of the most rewarding aspects for designers. Such stakeholders can provide feedback, contribute ideas, and help designers understand the particular project’s special needs.
Leaving a greener footprint Designing greener outdoor spaces, and contributing to making our schemes as sustainable as possible, is a positive move. The blue and green infrastructure of a development using permeable surfacing, bioswale drainage channels, and rain gardens, can be integrated where possible into the public realm, where site constraints allow. The use of sustainably sourced hard landscaping and recycled materials is very important. Within mental healthcare settings, the use of native and ornamental planting in all private outdoor spaces contributes considerably to the lowering of the carbon footprint.
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