Project Details
Project
Leodis Square, Sweet Street
Location
Leeds, England
Date
September 2020
About The Project
Compromising of four apartment blocks of up to 12 storeys high, Leodis Square, Sweet Street, Leeds is a city centre development project. Forming the courtyards for the apartments, the development is home to two podium gardens, situated on the roofs of the on-site car parking.
Constructing and landscaping the central podium courtyard gardens, was commercial landscape contractor Palmer Landscapes, who have over 50 years’ experience behind them.
Containing varied seating opportunities, planting, and lawn areas for residents to sit back, relax and enjoy city life, this offered an outdoor area that fit within the aspirational design of the overall development.
What we did
Following on from the long standing relationship, Palmers turned to Green-tech for their landscaping materials. Involving importing 550 m3 of Green-tree lightweight roof garden substrate through narrow walkways up to the podium courtyard gardens, this was a complex project. Using their wealth of experience of transporting substrates to elevated areas, the Palmers team decided to blow the substrate utilising a specialist topsoil pumping wagon.
Manufactured from an environmentally sustainable compost of recycled materials and lightweight aggregate, the Green-tree roof garden substrate was purpose mixed for this site to be lightweight and free draining.
The tight city centre restrictions and requirements to keep a steady flow of substrate for the topsoil pumping wagon, meant that the Green-tech team and Palmers team worked closely together to coordinate timed, scheduled deliveries accordingly. This meant the teams worked weekends and evenings to adhere to these movement restrictions.
Overall, it took seven days to complete the import of the Green-tree substrate, this was delivered to the site on a grab wagon. Then transferred to a pumping wagon and over 100m of pipeline was used to transfer the substrate over. Smaller planted areas, adopted a conveyor method where the substrate was placed on the conveyor belt tipped over the walls and barrowed to site.
Social spaces between the 4 buildings was created with the imported substrate mounded in plant beds and large turfed areas in the central courtyards.
Taking two years to complete, the Leodis Square project took two years to complete and won Palmer Landscapes a BALI Award 2020 on the category Roof Gardens/Living Wall Installations – Residential Roof Garden or Podium Landscaping – under 250k.
