Meet the Team!

Name: Rachel Amy Price
Year: M.Arch1
Atelier: SKN
BA Architecture: MSA
Part 1 Placement: Leach Rhodes Walker

Interests & Skills: I am interested in photography, tennis, wild camping, whittling and guitar; I am also a qualified yoga teacher. My CAD skills include Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, After Effects, plus AutoCAD and SketchUp. I also studied Foundation Art & Design at MMU.

What gardens mean to me: Gardens are a place for respite and reflection, exploration, relaxation, bird watching, connection with nature, connection with people, BBQs, and growing and cultivating fruit, vegetables and flowers.

Meet the Team!

Name: Baoxin Yang
Year: M.Arch1
Atelier: FLUX
BArch Architecture: JLJU
Part 1 Placement: Tianjin Meixin Architectural Design Co.

Interests & Skills: I really enjoy travelling and photography. Also, I enjoy the sport of archery because it allows me to practice staying focused on things. I use Revit, SU, AI, PS and ID.

What gardens mean to me: For me, it can be a memory of running through the grass with a kite as a child. It can also be a relief from the stress of a busy school day. With the increasing urbanization and population growth, parks are becoming more and more of a specimen of a scattered concrete forest.

Meet the Partners!

Friends of Chapel Street Park

The group came together in 2020 to rejuvenate the park and to make use of the abandoned bowling green which is now a community garden. 

The vision of the garden is: 
'To create a wildlife friendly space for the whole community to enjoy that is educational, safe and welcoming’. 

FCSP's Values: 
Kindness: We are empathetic, respectful and put local people at the heart of everything we do. 
Trust: We trust in each other and are all accountable and reliable to your local community park and community garden.
Education: Provide a welcoming, positive and safe learning environment. 
Environment: Leading by example to bring back and support a rich biodiversity. 
Inclusion: We want everyone to feel safe and welcome.

Week 1 Activities

Week 2 Activities

Our Site: Bluebell Green in Chapel Street Park

Our Site: Bluebell Green in Chapel Street Park

On our first day, Green Corridor Gateway met our partners, Vicky and Kate, for an online introduction and leader training talk to ensure our safety on site. In the afternoon we visited the site for a tour from Kate, and then met partners Jen and Cathy and their kids to hear about their aspirations for Bluebell Green. We took photos, drew sketches and discussed their plans for the garden.

Bluebell Green collage by one of our team members, Florence.

On our second day we created collages of Bluebell Green and included aspects that Jen and Cathy had asked for on Day 1. We also included some of our own design ideas which will be presented to the community for their feedback later in the week.

Bluebell Green collage by one of our team members, Joe.

Today we each drew scaled masterplans of Bluebell Green to reflect our collages from Day 2. Tomorrow we look forward to combining these design ideas into one final masterplan ready to present to Friends of Chapel Street Park on Saturday morning!

Each masterplan had to consider a set of site constraints: our partners requested that we retain the locations of the pond, poly-tunnel, bug hotel, raised and low planting beds, shed, and orchard saplings. FCSP explained that anything else could be re-located and moved around the site if we wished to change the current layout.

Our Partner, Jen, asked if we could create some signs for the children who visit Bluebell Green to give them activities to do such as finding different flowers around the garden.

Florence from our Green Corridor Gateway team drew these beautiful signs to encourage the kids to explore Bluebell Green's bug hotel and other areas within the garden.

This morning Green Corridor Gateway met on Teams to discuss which elements of yesterday's masterplanning sketches we will include in the final masterplan. Some of our pets joined the discussion too!

After our Teams meeting we created a CAD drawing of the final masterplan, with the elements that Friends of Chapel Street Park asked us to include in the design, such as accessible paths, willow arches, lean-to shelters and an accessible WC.

Jen from FCSP told us that the children in the community love the poem 'Nut Tree' by Julia Donaldson, so GCG's Florence designed this sign to put in Bluebell Green! We are all excited to share these signs with the community on Saturday, along with our masterplan and sketches from this week.

Our final masterplan is ready to present to Friends of Chapel Street Park tomorrow morning to receive their feedback. We look forward to meeting the community at Bluebell Green - the presentation will begin at 10.30am!

Presentation Day! We visited Bluebell Green on Saturday morning to present our final masterplan to the FCSP community and receive their feedback and comments. We will update the masterplan based on these comments and begin working on site next week!

We began building moguls on site today!

We also moved the tyres from next to the 'mud cafe' to the edge of the desire line path to create a boundary line between the kids' play area and the vegetable patches.

Sam is already loving the moguls we made yesterday!

We updated the Bluebell Green masterplan based on Friends of Chapel Street Park's feedback on Saturday morning. The main changes are the addition of organic shaped low beds to the south of the site, and a new location for the willow structures, second set of moguls, accessible WC and fire pit.

Today we made willow arches on site! We began by using canes to mark out where each arch would go, then we coppiced the on-site willow and planted the branches to form the arches. To stabilise the arch structures, we braced them with willow ties.

We made more signs for Bluebell Green!

Green Corridor Gateway's Joe painted this beautiful site plan for Friends of Chapel Street Park to follow in the future and display in their polytunnel. It shows the moguls we made this week, as well as the willow arches and willow fence around the 'mud cafe'.

Today we had a grand opening at Bluebell Green for Friends of Chapel Street Park and introduced the Kids of Chapel Street Park to the moguls and tyre obstacle course!