The brief
We were instructed to prepare a landscape mitigation plan to accompany a Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment for a sloping site with significant existing tree cover and a complex relationship with its immediate residential setting. The plan was required to do more than simply specify planting — it needed to test alternative design options against the landscape baseline so the design team and the local planning authority could see how different built layouts would integrate with the existing landscape pattern.
Our approach
Three alternative landscape mitigation plans were prepared in parallel: a baseline proposed site plan, an open-field option that retained more of the existing meadow setting, and a courtyard option that pulled the built form into a tighter cluster to free up more of the wider landscape. Each option used the same vocabulary of woodland tree planting around the periphery, native hedgerow planting along the existing field boundaries, structural shrub planting at the building edges, biodiversity wildflower meadow and a coordinated planting schedule — but each tested a different relationship between built form and landscape setting.
The detail
The planting schedules called out hedgerow species in transplant and bare-rooted specifications (Corylus avellana, Cornus sanguinea, Fagus sylvatica, Ilex aquifolium, Sorbus aucuparia, Viburnum opulus), with single-stake shelter guards branched at three-break maturity. The woodland tree planting palette mixed Crab apple, Crataegus monogyna, Hawthorn and Salix caprea or cinerea at the appropriate sizes for the role each played in the mitigation framework. All three options retained the existing open meadow setting along the southern boundary as a defining landscape feature, and all three were costed for delivery in the first available planting season after construction.
Working on a similar project?
If you are preparing a planning application that needs landscape evidence — from a single dwelling to a major EIA scheme — we can help. Tell us about your site and we will respond with a fixed fee and programme within one working day.
