Interested parties:
Wildflower Turf Ltd (Consultancy Team), Milton Park Science & Technology Centre, CBRE UK, Nurture Landscapes.
The brief:
Milton Park is a dynamic and vibrant science, business and technology park in Oxfordshire, situated between Didcot and Abingdon. Spread across 250 acres, Milton Park is home to 250 companies and 9,000 people.
Wildflower Turf Ltd had previously supplied Milton Park with 1,520m2 of Meadowscape ProTM Landscape 34 in March 2021 and 60m2 of SuDs Wildflower Turf® in July 2021.
At the request of Peter King, Associate Director of Facilities Manager at CBRE (Milton Park), working with landscape maintenance provider, Nurture Landscapes, Wildflower Turf Ltd was asked to examine a number of wildflower-led areas and provide expertise in order to:
- Identify direct seeded areas that may require remedial work.
- Consider the long-term challenges faced by specific areas; shade (trees and buildings), moisture (soil type & irrigation), wear (foot traffic) and provide solutions to alleviate these challenges.
- Review the current wildflower maintenance regime and timings to ensure long term success
- Identify new and/or alternative locations for wildflowers at the Park.
The work:
In conjunction with specified objectives, our consultants also had to take into consideration the public space design of Milton Park’s wildflower habitat alongside expansion plans while ensuring that the Park’s wildflower areas remain fit-for-purpose over time.
Our team, led by our Managing Director and Lead Consultant, James Hewetson-Brown, conducted a site visit to Milton Park in September 2022.
In total we examined eight distinct areas within the Park, including planting around a SuDs lagoon, heavily shaded areas, and areas of meadow where grass was dominating.
A site-specific plan provided Milton Park with a number of efficiencies not previously considered. Recommendations around equipment to use, cutting regimes, timings, and treatments such as graminicide were detailed, with practical solutions to increase species diversity also outlined.
The results:
Following the site visit and consultation, Wildflower Turf Ltd’s considered and detailed recommendations have assisted Milton Park to remedy and improve the performance of their wildflower spaces and better plan for the future.
The Wildflower Turf Ltd consultancy team provided solutions-led expertise that will allow Milton Park to mitigate risk, maximise value and reduce costs and create a sustainable landscape for all users of the site for many years to come.
