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Grounds Maintenance, Landscape Creation, Arboriculture, Sports Surfacing, Parks management, IOS Managing Safely Training, Ecology & Biodiversity, Grass cutting, Horticulture, Street Cleaning, Soft Landscaping, Hard Landscaping
Our Services
idverde provides a wide range of green services, including grounds maintenance, landscape creation, and advice services, to both private and public sectors across the UK.
Garston Park
In December 2019, idverde was awarded the contract for the renovation of Garston Park for Watford Borough Council. The project scope involved a major overhaul of the existing play area, increasing its size by almost six times and the installation of a range of new equipment, including accessible features and a small skate park.
Background
Garston Park is a 16-acre public open space surrounded by houses on three sides. The park is consequently a very busy public area and provides access to local shops with amenities including football pitches, an outdoor gym and a very tired play area.
Our Role
The main features of the project included the creation of new hard-surfaced pathways to improve the park’s connectivity, which included resurfacing the majority of the existing paths in the park. A complete renovation and enlargement of the existing playground which introduced space for a new range of equipment fit for a variety of ages and abilities. This enlargement also created space for a brand new skate area which included a range of surfaces and ramps. The project also included the installation of safety grass as surfacing, new metal fencing amongst the renovation of some of the existing fencing on the site. The park’s green area has been improved by a diverse tree stock that has been planted around the boundaries. The project was completed with brand new park gates.
Challenges
Access
As the park forms an important access route for local residents, we had to install temporary work measures to maintain access in a safe and effective manner. We used fencing to protect the areas where we were working and pathway diversions were clearly sign-posted.
Additional measures included:
- Working during social hours only
- Phasing the works so that only small sections of the park were ‘under construction’ at any one time
- Installing temporary works to maintain access
Resident Engagement
Throughout the planning phase, local residents were invited to submit their comments, thoughts and ideas as to how the park could be developed. Many of the responses were incorporated into the final scheme.
One of the difficulties in this regard was the need to maintain a Covid-19 compliant site as the works took place during the spring and summer of 2020. This meant that we were unable to arrange any direct resident involvement during the construction phase – an approach that has proved popular and beneficial on other projects.
Find out more about our play areas and sports facilities services, here.