Park Bay Estate

Location: Paignton, Devon
Services: Landscape design
Status: Completed 2013
POI: Street scene plot frontages and a series of public open spaces, including a play space

Providing specialist advice and full landscape designs to a nationwide home builder for a new housing development in Paignton

Landscape design

As greenfield sites continue to be in high demand for new-build housing developments across Devon, developers are encoraged to look at previously developed land that becomes available. The Park Bay estate in Paignton made full use of a site formerly used for a garden centre and Bovis Homes SW Ltd were keen to create a high-quality landscape setting for the proposed 110 new homes.

Approached by the developer, we were engaged to provide specialist advice for their development. Our plans featured a combination of hard and soft landscaping, and we were responsible for preparing full design and specifications for the entire site, comprising street scene plot frontages and a series of public open spaces including a play space.

Site integration

The brief for the Landscape scheme was to create a development with a strong identity that reflected and reinforced the underlying feature of the locality. This fits neatly with the Engish Rivera’s ‘exotic’ feel, particularly the coastal edge around Torbay.

It was important for the development to integrate well with the site’s urban/rural fringe context while providing a high-quality street scene along Brixham Road. As such, our landscape design concept can be broken down into two broad themes.

Coastal and tropical themes

A coastal garden theme runs through the main street scene throughout the site. Taking inspiration from coastal edges with the sea, it has shingle surfaces with a low hardy Mediterranean planting scheme.

A tropical garden theme takes inspiration from the sheltered oases found in historic estate gardens along the Devon and Cornish coastline. Such places provide an ideal microclimate for more hardy tropical exotics and architectural plants. This planting theme is found within the main public open space area to the south of the site, with lush green foliage and a cool white and blue colour scheme.

This area is also home to the stand out play area that comprises strong, durable wooden equipment, fitting in and working with the landscape surrounding it.