St Clement’s Hospital Site

• Landscaping for residential development of a Victorian hospital site.
• Part of masterplanning team evolving designs for planning approval.
• Advising on plot sizes, parking areas and soft landscaping.
• Aboricultural and ecological surveys with mitigation measures.

St Clement’s is a Victorian hospital set in extensive grounds in Ipswich which is being redeveloped as housing. We worked with Lawson Planning Partnership to create a landscape plan to secure planning approval for up to 400 dwellings prior to sale. The site also housed a sports club which had to be integrated into the plan in a way that was appropriate for a residential development. There were a number of trees on the site so we carried out a full arboricultural survey and impact assessment.

We used this to develop a plan to maintain trees where possible and defined new planting where the development made it necessary to remove trees. We commissioned an ecological report and used the ecologist’s recommendations to guide our design in relation to native planting and the creation of habitat spaces. We worked in conjunction with other members of the design team to create a masterplan, advising on the organisation of the space to incorporate appropriate parking spaces and plot sizes.

We planned the hard landscaping using a change from macadam in the street spaces to block paving in the residential areas and soft landscaping for the gardens to soften the house frontages. We redesigned the sports pitch along with a games and multi-play area. Tree planting was used to provide screening to the residential areas. The masterplan for the site changed in response to discussions with building control and we took a flexible approach to the layout of the scheme as the number of properties on the site and other elements changed. We responded to these changes by adapting the landscape elements of the site to the new requirements until we had achieved a design that achieved approval.