New National Building with Nature Award launched 26th November 2020

We are delighted to be launching our new Building with Nature National Award today in collaboration with the Landscape Institute (LI). This award, judged by LI’s expert panel, celebrates developments that have put nature at the heart of decision making. It recognizes inspirational design vision in the integration of high-quality green infrastructure into the built environment, and it champions a commitment to deliver that vision on the ground, ensuring that the multiple benefits of high-quality green infrastructure are felt by future generations.

As we face the triple challenge of the Public Health, Climate and Ecological Emergencies, there has never been a more pressing need for better integration of high-quality green infrastructure into the built environment. Green infrastructure offers practical, well evidenced solutions to address the triple emergency providing; healthy green spaces to meet diverse needs within communities, climate adaptation and mitigation solutions, soft features that support good water and flood management, natural carbon capture and the creation and restoration of habitats to support nature’s recovery networks. We are thrilled to showcase with the new Building with Nature National Award, some ground breaking examples of genuinely holistic thinking in the design and delivery of green infrastructure. This year’s Award finalists demonstrate how it’s possible to work with nature as your palette, creating innovation in built environments that benefit people and wildlife.

This award champions schemes that have secured high-quality green infrastructure features at every stage of development: from planning, design, and implementation, through to management, maintenance and monitoring. With this award we want to inspire the UK built-environment industry, to raise the bar for green infrastructure and to deliver more places across the UK where people and wildlife can live and thrive together.

We are thrilled that this year the Award goes to Forth Valley Royal Hospital and Larbert Woods.

Forth Valley Royal Hospital and Larbert Woods is a national exemplar for green infrastructure, demonstrating what is possible when a shared vision between ambitious and committed partners is delivered with fastidious attention to the detail set out by the professionals responsible for protecting and enhancing landscape quality in the early stages of design.

The partnership between NHS Forth Valley, Forestry Commission Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage, and the commitment to quality from Raeburn Farquhar Bowen Landscape Architects at each stage of delivery, has resulted in the delivery of an exceptional medical facility in a high-quality landscape setting.

The LI judging panel praised Forth Valley Royal Hospital and Larbert Woods as “a national exemplar for NHS” that represented “value for money”. The panel appreciated how the integration of green infrastructure and the natural world into the scheme captured the preventative health benefits of green infrastructure I to visitors and outside population and remarked that it was a great win for a hospital to be doing such best practice, and to be able to share this best practice with the wider sector.

We also want to celebrate the other two finalists; Lower Mill Estate, the Cotswolds and Silverlake, Dorset (both Habitat First Group and The Landmark Practice) for delivering schemes that create wonderful places where people and wildlife can thrive, with our particular applaud appreciation for placemaking, with the sensitivity of the design to the ecological characteristics and local landscape character.

There was strong praise from the judging panel for both Lower Mill Estate and Silverlake, for water management and for the biodiversity measures put in place around individual species such as populations of dormice and sand martins.

Silverlake was singled out for improvements to public access to green infrastructure and for the monitoring of the impact of biodiversity measures, whilst Lower Mill Estate was praised for the impressively specific design for species, the green infrastructure contribution to local area and long-term management plan.

We wish to thank all those who applied for this award for your commitment to deliver schemes that provide genuine long-term benefits to people and wildlife, and to encourage all those developers and design teams who are just starting out on their journey with Building with Nature to hold to your vision for high-quality green infrastructure and aspire to win this national award to recognise your achievement.