Stonebridge Park wins Bristol Civic Society Award 2025!

Small Projects Can Make a Big Difference and Bring Delight

Stonebridge Park, June 2025

We were appointed by the fab team at Agile Homes Places for People at Stonebridge Park in Bristol to create a positive and attractive landscape that would soften and uplift the hard institutional landscape and feel, featuring tall grasses, Verbena sp., Euphorbia sp., Bistorta sp., Geranium sp., Leucanthemum sp., and others. Also included extensive woodland planting and native hedgerows, trees and hundreds of native bulbs, such as Bluebells and Snowdrops, overlooking the Clay Bottom Valley and Natur

e Reserve.

What made this project special was that it was part of a new development featuring seven one-bedroom modular homes, which offered independent living opportunities for formerly homeless individuals and supported them in rebuilding their lives.

It was not an easy site! Compacted soils, steeply sloping woodland with complexity, with an occupied site, landownership and use, and on the edge of Clay Bottom Local Nature Reserve.

The aim was to create a landscape that would provide a softer, more natural and flowing contrast to the rigid institutional feel of the existing buildings, overgrown woody shrubs and hard surfaces. To bring seasonal change, attractive flowering and pollinator-friendly planting. Key facts were:

• 1473 nos. Ornamental plants: included 60/40 non-native and native plant mix with specimen shrubs to provide structure long term, and over 1700 native bulbs

• 2140 nos. Native woodland scrub mix: including Yew, Viburnium, Dog Rose, Hawthorn, Honeysuckle and Dogwood

• 56 nos. Native trees and 2 fruit trees

Not only did it achieve biodiversity net gain of over 22%, but also to install various ecological interventions, such as hedgehog houses, reptile hibernacula, log piles, and bird and bat boxes.

This small landscape plays a role in a much bigger story of care, collaboration, and regeneration.

More information here: https://www.landsmithassociates.co.uk/stonebridgepark