What’s New Autumn-Winter 2011

We have just finished making a tree house for Cropthorne Village in Worcestershire. This was designed about a year ago and now we have finally built it. We worked with structural engineer Peter Goodhind to make sure the structure was sound, and he came up with a beautiful cantilevered approach which allows the uprights nearest the tree to move with soil heave...without putting stress on other parts of the tree house. This has been a fine project to be involved with and we look forward to the feedback – you don’t see many tree houses in public play areas. It should be a great place for village children to get away from it all and enjoy being up among the green leaves (oh and by the way, its tricky for adults to get up there!)

There have been plenty of Forest Schools type projects happening and soon the tree planting season will be upon us. Most of the projects we have been busy with this year, require trees and other plants...so to Hagley, Dene Magna, Our Lady and Northwick Manor we will be returning to come December onwards.

Guy Redmond is completing a post grad diploma in Landscape Architecture next May 2012. This is his second full time year at Gloucestershire University, one of the oldest and most highly regarded courses in the UK. He has been specialising in sustainable urban drainage systems; urban design; environmental impact assessment; and the philosophy and histories of children’s gardening and play space in the landscape. So, as from next year we will officially be able to offer a number of different products and services, please get in touch for further details.

We have some interesting ideas going forward...of course, funding constraints are upon us, so we have been looking at how we can turn these into opportunities for a new approach to concepts of productive gardening and rearing livestock in schools. We are beginning to plan a new range of self build structures and other DIY innovative schemes. Want to know more?..or be involved?...great, then get in touch and we can tell you more.

Don't miss our downloadable document "What is a Natural Play Space?" click the link to view or download.