Greening our car parking areas
High Street car park and St George's Road car park are public car parks located in Cheltenham town centre. Both locations, due to the nature of their use, were lacking in biodiversity value. There was an opportunity here to create habitats which might not otherwise establish in this environment and help connect existing habitats. By creating areas of evergreen vegetation and by planting trees in the middle of the sites, the impact of planting intervention will increase connectivity for insects and small invertebrates.
We secured European Regional Development Funding to improve biodiversity across the town centre as part of the Habitat Cheltenham project.
High Street car park
Planting has been added along the entrance to the car park.
With new trees added to the car park, we worked closely with the contractor to design a “hand-made” bespoke tree protector.
We came up with the idea of replacing the tree guards, which weren’t strong enough to protect our car park trees, by repurposing these lamp-post protectors, which are now solidly installed and robust. The existing grilles have been cut to accommodate the new tree protectors and welded together for increased strength.
Light-coloured, permeable gravel will reflect the sunlight during sunny periods, keeping the tree pits moist and hopefully litter free. It also acts as a compacted underlay for the grilles (if a vehicle drives on to the grille, the gravel will stop the grille from bending down and breaking).
St George's Road car park
Get in touch
If you have any questions or comments, or would like to get involved in our projects, please email [email protected]
Stakeholders and partners
Stakeholders include: ERDF, HM Government, CBC trees department, Ubico.