After many years of disuse, a full renovation is taking place to change Harrogate’s Craven Lodge into a mix of offices and luxury apartments. And a novel solution is ensuring trees are a major part of this.
IT is a proud Victorian villa that is being brought back to life – and a novel solution is ensuring trees are playing a major role.
After many years of disuse, a full renovation is taking place to change Harrogate’s Craven Lodge into a mix of offices and luxury apartments.
To increase the green credentials, and to add a further degree of privacy to the frontage, a 22-metre trench was planned to provide adequate shared rooting volume for four, thee-metre-high hornbeam ‘Frans Fontaine’ trees. These stunning trees retain their columnar shape into maturity and are an excellent choice to provide a classic architectural shape and beautiful colour, especially in autumn.
The new trees were positioned to break up and sit between parking spots at the front of the building. A solution was required that would enable the cars to be parked without their weight compacting the soil in the tree pits.
Callum Bain-Mackay, lead designer from Grant Horticulture, approached Green-tech for the best way to get the optimal rooting volume for the tree pits, within the tight space constraints of the property.
The original thought was to use Green-tech’s sandwich-construction TreeRaft, but the lack of space made this impractical. The new TreeParker Urban Tree Pit System was therefore suggested as this would involve less digging out laterally of the existing ground.
The initial landscape plan was for separate tree pits for each tree, but after review, Green-tech chiefs suggested one long trench. This offered two advantages over individual tree pits. Firstly, trees are quite happy to share space, so if we can provide them with one larger pit to share, the roots can borrow space from the other trees, in effect gaining more rooting volume. Secondly, by only excavating one trench, you can save time and labour costs over four individual pits.
The TreeParker system comprises rigid, modular units made from reinforced, recycled polypropylene. These units do a vital job in enabling the ground above a tree pit to be trafficked, supporting the paving above (up to 56 tonne/m2), while at the same time protecting the soil below from compaction. This means that rather than having to use a fast-draining and low organic structural tree soil, Green-tree’s Geocell topsoil can be used; which is friable and organic – ideal for successful tree establishment.
The TreeParker units, although highly rigid, still provide 95 per cent of their volume for rooting space. The heavy-duty, reinforced legs are available in various heights from the factory; 400, 600, 800 mm, and 1, 1.2, 1.5 m.
Although TreeParker has been used extensively in high-profile projects throughout Europe, Grant Horticulture is the first company in the UK to install the system which was launched by UK distributor Green-tech last year.
“We have worked with Green-tech for several years, mainly for supplies, not anything quite as big as this,” Callum said. “They were happy to spend time explaining the system, bringing units over for us to see first-hand, providing technical drawings, and generally being supportive, with nothing being too much trouble. TreeParker is definitely something we will use for future tree pits.”
Green-tech’s specification advisor Alasdair Innes added: “It was a pleasure to work with a local landscape company such as Grant Horticulture, and a great bonus to be able to be involved with the installation. We’re looking forward to seeing the trees flourishing in the final refurbished property.”
For more details of any products or a copy of the latest catalogue (digital or hard copy), call the Green-tech team on 01423 332 100 or email sales@green-tech.co.uk
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