Client: St Helens Borough Council
Completion Date: May 2012
Duration: 8 weeks
Location: St Helens
Taylor Park in St Helens is a well used local amenity, popular with dog walkers, anglers, model boat users, and of course children.
The existing car park was oversubscribed, causing overspill into neighbouring residential areas. Within the park, there was little scope to expand car parking facilities without losing valuable parkland resources. St Helens Borough Council Parks Dept. elected to engage Landscape Architects, TEP to design a “no dig” car park in an overgrown wooded area, causing minimum disruption to existing park facilities and to wildlife.
Dowhigh were contracted to clear undergrowth, and remove a small number of mature trees in the designated area. A bare minimum of soil was scraped off, and a specially designed tree root protection system installed. This allowed the construction of the car park without causing damage to surrounding mature trees.
The tree root protection Geocells were laid on Terram filter material, and filled with reduced fines clean stone. A second layer of Terram and one of Geogrid were placed before another layer of one size 10mm limestone. Finally the surface layer was laid of interlocking Bodpave paving grids which were also filled with one size 10mm limestone.
The reduced fines and uncompacted construction allow for free drainage. Tannalised timber edgings all around the perimeter contained the built up material, and soil was placed behind the timber edgings to blend in unobtrusively with the surrounding woodland.
A small footpath was built to connect the new to the existing car park.
Four new flower bed areas were constructed and planted with shrubs and mature trees,and the surrounding woodlands were thinned out and replanted with native species.
30 new car parking spaces were created, while existing facilities remained undisturbed.
