We are delighted to announce that The Landmark Practice together with our client, Habitat First Group, are finalists in the Landscape Institute’s Building with Nature Award 2020 that recognizes the design, delivery and management of great places for people and wildlife.
Landmark has provided landscape and ecology services for Habitat First Group for over 15 years and we are very proud that we have not only one but two projects, Lower Mill Estate and Silverlake, on the finalists list.
Lower Mill Estate and Silverlake
The Lower Mill Estate sits within the Cotswolds and the concept was initiated 21 years ago as the UK’s first residential nature reserve. In the 1950s and 60s, gravel was extracted from beneath the estate farmland leaving a network of flooded workings amongst the remnant landscape of tree and hedgerow cover.
In Dorset, Silverlake (formally Warmwell Quarry) was acquired by Habitat First Group in 2012 and gained outline planning permission for up to 1,000 holiday homes in 2014.
Both Estates are designed so that the residential areas are alive with wildlife year-round. Pioneer development in biodiversity net gain, enhancements are delivered on-site by ensuring that sustainable drainage systems (SuDs) and the landscape within which development lies are designed for functionality as well as for biodiversity and climate change resilience and by making space for nature wherever possible.
The resultant rich network of connected green infrastructure, brings benefit to both people and wildlife through a landscape-led approach. Both schemes are nature-inclusive, bringing wildlife into the development and connecting people to nature; enhancing wellbeing; and building for climate resilience.
Building with Nature Awards
Lower Mill Estate has already been accredited with the Building with Nature (BwN) Design Award for the entire Masterplan, and Building with Nature Full Award (Excellent) for completed phases at Mill Village, Copse Mere, Clearwater Village and Howells Mere.
Silverlake’s masterplan achieved the BwN Core Standards, was awarded Building with Nature Design Award in 2019 and Building with Nature Full Award (Excellent) was awarded to the completed phase at Beaumont Village.
Our BwN Services
The Landmark Practice’s core specialisms of ecology and landscape services synergise strongly with Building with Nature. Experience from long-term input on projects such as Lower Mill Estate and Silverlake means that we understand what it takes to design, implement, and manage commercially successful schemes that have landscape and ecology at their heart. Building with Nature also offers opportunities to meet emerging measurable Biodiversity Net Gain requirements with design measures that are truly multi-functional, are tailored to the development, the site and their surroundings and that bring value to development. In addition to our experience as Landscape Architects and Ecologists we now offer Building with Nature Assessor expertise in-house.
Building with Nature is gathering momentum, gaining interest from local planning authorities and developers alike, as a measure to bridge the gap between the current Government emphasis on the apparently conflicting messages of ‘build, build, build’ and the need to make space for nature.
If Building with Nature is of interest to you, and you would like to find out more about the process and how it can add value to schemes we would be delighted to talk to you. Please call the office on 0117 923 0455 or send us an email at enquires@thelandmarkpractice.com.