Lovedon Fields is a 50-home residential scheme that forms a new edge to the village of Kings Worthy in Hampshire, UK. From a single point of access off Lovedon Lane, the houses cluster around the site’s upper part around a triangular open space – the Grove. An avenue, with houses on both sides, runs along the lower contours and re-defines the village edge against a new 4.6ha park.
The new park is a significant extension of Eversley Park and has been designed as a low-key, ecological landscape with allotments, a bike track, a running circuit, a natural play area, wildflower grassland, footpaths, and enhanced boundary planting.
The project as a whole has been designed with local wildlife in mind. New habitats and movement corridors are being created at varying scales within the park and housing areas for birds, slow worms, bats, hedgehogs, invertebrates, and swallows. Bat boxes, bird boxes, and bee bricks are incorporated into the brick walls of the houses.
The public spaces within the development are multifunctional offering places to relax, play and socialise whilst providing hard working infiltration basins for periods of extreme rainfall. These public spaces will be planted with habitat-rich species to encourage local wildlife building on the site’s rich ecology. Informal play and social interaction are prominent throughout the scheme with natural play elements, seating and a boules court located within the centre of the development whilst a more comprehensive natural play and picnic area is located on the boundary with Eversley Park offering children of various ages an opportunity to play and socialize and interact with the wider community.
The site has been planned to enhance the sense of home and encourage residents to participate in gardening by including planting productive growing thresholds with edible varieties on each property’s front boundary. These growing gardens will create local pockets of valuable and delightful landscapes and, along with the community allotments and orchard, will promote healthy living in a social context relating to the productive land use of the site and providing opportunities to develop community spirit further. A mix of specimen tree planting of various species, native hedgerow planting, shrubs, perennials, bulbs, and ecological grassland planting will further enhance the local landscape, providing year-round interest and essential habitat for wildlife.
Lovedon Fields
Landscape Architects: BD landscape architects
Client: HAB Housing
Design Architects: John Pardey Architects
Executive Architects: BBA
Engineers: Clarkebond
LVIA specialists: Landmark Practice
Main Contractors: HAB
Landscape Contractors: Hawksworth Garden Services
Groundworker: Renelec
Plan: BD landscape architects
Photography: Jim Stephenson, Pete Humphry
