Applying rural landscape design best practice to create greener communities

Access to nature is vital to health and wellbeing

Parks and greenspaces in England deliver an estimated £6.6 billion of health, climate change and environmental benefits every year. But one third of people do not have access to good quality green and blue space within 15 minutes of their home. Given with 80% of people in the UK live in towns and cities, accessing greenspace is something that takes a bit more effort, both on the part of individuals seeking out opportunities to engage with nature, and the planners and designers shaping the places people live.

The value of green space in new developments

The value of green spaces and time outdoors was brought into sharp focus during the Covid pandemic, and the recognition of the value of time spent outdoors for health and wellbeing benefits continues to increase. With this comes an imperative for those designing the places people will live, in particular with the bold aim of delivering 300,000 new homes a year for the next 5 years, to think about how this crucial greenspace will be incorporated – both to meet the requirements to deliver biodiversity enhancements through development and for public health.

Placemaking in residential areas

‘Placemaking’ is perhaps an overused phrase, but at its heart its an acknowledgment that the development and delivery of new homes, workplaces and infrastructure must consider the integration of these elements with each other, and with the public realm. Green space is a crucial part of that public realm and last year, Natural England produced the first Green Infrastructure Framework setting out guidance for planners and developers with the aim of increasing the amount of green cover to 40% in urban residential areas.

Landscape-led approach to delivering new homes

Our landscape architects have written before about how taking a landscape-led approach that integrates green and blue infrastructure is key to delivering housing that provides a setting that enables and encourages outdoor activity, and can contribute to managing issues such as surface water and drainage as well as creating space for nature.

Most of our work designing new housing development is in rural settings where sites tend to be less space constrained making the inclusion of public green space – whether parks, community orchards, gardens, or footpaths – easier to accommodate. In urban settings space can be more constrained, but with most local planning authorities attaching great importance to the provision of good quality green space and there is the need to apply some of this design thinking on all housing developments.

Darwin Green – a new community

One project which really exemplifies this approach is the creation of a new community on the outskirts of Cambridge and whilst you won’t often find us working in the city, but we are happy to make an exception when projects are pioneering new standards in urban design and placemaking prioritising green space and nature.

Delivered by Barratt David Wilson Homes, the aim is to create a strong sense of local identity, celebrating the unique setting and qualities of the site and enabling residents to live healthy and environmentally conscious lifestyles. Green space is a critical component of that vision, and Rural Solutions’ landscape architects have designed a multifunctional landscape setting with community facilities and extensive open space at its heart.

Matt Javis, Associate Director in our Landscape Team shares more on this project, here.

Get in touch

If you have a development project in mind and would like to see how by designing with landscape and green space at its heart, please get in touch by emailing info@ruralsolutions.co.uk. We’d love to hear from you.

Illustrations (c) Allies and Morrison