Landscaping & Public Realm
Parks, streetscapes and external works — the last trade on site, the first thing people see.
Public realm work is construction in the finished tense: paving, street furniture, planting and water features installed around completed buildings, often while the client is already moving in. The earthworks, drainage and external-works methods underneath are the shared ones, linked below — the sector's skill is executing them to a finished standard among finished things.
The three guides in this sector cover hard landscaping and public realm — paving, kerbs, street furniture and the levels game played in millimetres; soft landscaping and planting, where the product is alive and the aftercare is part of the contract; and SuDS and blue-green infrastructure, drainage that is designed to be seen, holding water on the surface instead of hiding it in a pipe.
What does Landscaping & Public Realm cover?
Process guides in Landscaping & Public Realm
- Hard Landscaping & Public Realm — The paved, kerbed and furnished surface people actually walk on — footways, plazas and streetscapes built up in engineered layers, laid to millimetre tolerances and edged, drained and detailed to stay put for decades.
- Soft Landscaping & Planting — The living half of the landscape — topsoil, trees, hedges, shrubs, turf and seed — planted to recognised nursery standards and then watered, weeded and replaced through an establishment period that decides whether it lives.
- SuDS & Blue-Green Infrastructure — Drainage that behaves like the ground did before you built on it — swales, ponds, permeable paving, rain gardens and green roofs slowing, cleaning and storing runoff, then handed over with a maintenance plan someone has to honour.
Shared methods used in Landscaping & Public Realm
- External Works & Landscaping
- Earthworks & Excavation
- Drainage & Utility Corridors
- Kerbs, Footways & Road Furniture
- Testing, Handover & Snagging
Part of the Environmental & Land Development group.