Cator Park, Kidbrooke Village

By James Lord

James Lord is a landscape architect and partner at HTA. James established the landscape design discipline at HTA and is responsible for design quality and business development across HTA’s landscape portfolio. He leads a team of 25 landscape professionals across studios throughout the UK.

Cator Park won the Sir David Attenborough Award for Enhancing Biodiversity and the President’s Award at the 2020 LI Awards. The judges said: ‘Cator Park is an inspiring example of applying a new, nature-inclusive approach to parkland design. The redesign shows a new attitude to nature, benefitting biodiversity and the local community.’ The head of the landscape team that delivered the scheme explains the thinking behind it and the experience that led to its development.

Cator Park, located in Kidbrooke Village, South East London, is an inspiring example of applying a new, nature-inclusive approach to parkland design, that enhances biodiversity and delivers an inclusive outdoor space.

The thinking that went into Cator Park started more than twenty years ago, with the formation of our landscape discipline. Our design approach has evolved during this time, changing in emphasis from the creation of formal and hard landscapes to a focus on bringing people and nature closer together, by creating softer, biodiverse spaces as typified by Cator Park. This shift in approach reflects a broader change in practice across the country and of our clients. It has been supported by legislation such as the introduction of Biodiversity Net Gain and Urban Greening Factor targets in the NPPF and London Plan, and growing activity in response to the climate emergency.

View of the naturalised SuDS pond

© Nick Harrison

HTA Design LLP first started as an architecture practice rooted in community architecture, focusing on improving people’s homes and the way they lived. From the 1970s onward, we have spent time with local residents, helping to transform public housing, which still remains an important part of our regeneration work on major estates including Acton Gardens and the Aylesbury Estates, amongst other projects. We soon came to the realisation that, to truly transform people’s lives, we need not focus solely on buildings, but also on the surrounding place and environment in which people live – so beginning the practice’s creative collaboration between landscape and architecture, urban design, planning, and communications.

For us, a fundamental part of our design approach is to spend time with and get to know the communities for which we are serving; to understand a site’s past, so that it can inform its future, and to create places where nature and people can coexist in harmony. The essence of our landscape design is people, place and nature.

Our earlier schemes at Hanham Hall [featured in Landscape winter 2016] marked the realisation of our collaborative approach at HTA, where each discipline played an integral role in shaping this new neighbourhood. The development was England’s first large scale volume house builder scheme to achieve the zero-carbon standard, and is one of the flagship Carbon Challenge schemes promoted by the Homes and Communities Agency. At the core of our approach was a belief that building sustainable communities is about more than meeting the requirements set by codes. It means creating a place where people want to build their lives, where they are inspired to live harmoniously with their environment, and where a sense of community is fostered through the shared spaces and shared interests. In this case, we provided allotments, greenhouses, orchards and play areas, set amongst retained trees, hedgerows and meadows.

The new residential development was immersed in a wildlife rich landscape. Moving away from formal, overly curated, manicured spaces to introducing allotments, hedgerows, swales, ponds, and grasslands that are managed to the benefit of wildlife.

The native meadow border

© Nick Harrison

This experience directly influenced our approach to Cator Park, which in turn provided us with the opportunity to apply a more biodiverse approach on a park-wide scale. The park forms the focus for the major estate regeneration scheme, Kidbrooke Village, and is Berkeley Homes’ flagship Biodiversity Net Gain Project. HTA Design have been working collaboratively with Berkeley Group for over 15 years. They have a strong understanding of the value that thoughtful and innovative landscape architecture can bring to places and the people who inhabit them. In 2016, Berkeley set an industry-leading commitment through their business to “develop and apply an approach to ensure that all new developments create a net biodiversity gain.”

In 2017, we started working with Berkeley and the London Wildlife Trust in leading a team of experts to remodel and rewild the 20 acre park, with a focus on enhancing biodiversity to fulfil the Group’s commitment to ensure that there is an ecological gain on each of its sites. This unique partnership was key to unlocking the potential of the site, as all teams could share their expertise and experience, working cohesively and with shared goals in mind.

Kite Park – a destination playable landscape at the heart of the Kidbrooke Village community

© Nick Harrison

To create a biodiverse landscape with a high ecological value, we focused on restoring natural balance to the area, with a diverse planting palette, featuring 99% native species, while transforming large areas of amenity grass into wildlife-attracting meadows. Our design requires significantly less maintenance compared to more traditional approaches, and produces a multisensory experience for visitors, who can enjoy the colours, scents, and sounds of nature. The new marginal habitats have attracted herons and kingfishers, and a peregrine falcon has taken up residence on the roof of one of the park side buildings. On completion, Kidbrooke Village will have achieved a net biodiversity gain of over 200%.

Seating steps

© Nick Harrison

The landscape design of the park considers the history of the site with a main pathway tracing the line of the former Kyd Brook, a historic waterway that gives its name to the entire development. The water features form an integral part of the wider water management network and ecological network. Meanwhile, the topography of the park creates a patchwork of habitats sewn together by the considered design of areas of interaction and contemplation. This includes a play area made of recycled natural materials (blending play provision with the natural ecology of the site), a nature trail, a pond with a viewing platform, and benches and stone reliefs to sit on and enjoy the natural surroundings.

A native planting mix defines the meandering edges of the Chalk Stream

© Nick Harrison

Climbing wall made from recycled British Rail sleepers and a telegraph pole rope walk

© Nick Harrison

Establishing the landscape early with Berkeley provided an immediate sense of place and signifies their aspiration for the wider development. Working with clients who recognise the importance of harnessing nature in the city is incredibly powerful; large scale housing projects and estate regeneration takes time, often decades, to be delivered, so informed and meaningful change is often required. What is essential is establishing a shared core vision between all stakeholders from the very beginning, so that as a development evolves, value is added.

Cator Park acts as an example that other urban development should follow, making places that are genuinely shared by people and nature. Not only has nature returned but the parkland transformation has received an overwhelmingly positive response from local residents. Increasingly, the neighbourhoods we design use less space for cars and leave more room for green space and infrastructure that positively contributes to the health and wellbeing of residents. Placing landscape architecture and green infrastructure at the heart of schemes not only has a positive impact on biodiversity, but also builds a legacy for the local community and wider city.

The LI’s new publication ‘Landscape for 2030’ features Cator Park as a case study. Download a copy https://www. landscapeinstitute. org/news/ new-publicationlandscape-2030/

HTA’s redesign of 8.1 ha Cator Park in Kidbrooke Village opened to the public last year. Working in collaboration with the London Wildlife Trust, the scheme returns nature to the city and challenges the perception that urban brownfield development cannot contribute to the wider ecological and biodiversity network whilst creating successful spaces for the community.

We responded to the brief from Berkeley Homes with a landscape led vision for Cator Park and the wider Kidbrooke Village, proposing a mosaic of varied habitat, topography and biophilic spaces including lakes, water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) wetlands, meadows, open amenity and wild spaces. These wilder green spaces provide more valuable habitats for birds, bees and other wildlife, as well as dealing with local flood mitigation and water management, and providing more interesting, varied and engaging places for the local community to spend time close to nature. This project is on course to deliver a 200% gain in biodiversity based on DEFRA’s own metrics, and provides valuable lessons for how traditional urban parkland can be adapted to help nature recovery.

Drawing upon the history of a lost river that crossed the site and from where the village takes its name, the Lower Kid Brooke, a new chalk stream creates a palimpsest of the ancient waterway as a dry chalk stream winding its way from the north to the south of the park. The chalk stream forms the backbone of the landscape approach, connecting the existing water bodies with a dry riverbed, acting as a path and inviting the public to discover and interact with the natural environment.

At the source of the chalk stream, we have created a 3,000m 2 wild play space creating a biophilic experience for ages 0 to 100. Limestone outcrops and climbing walls enclose the space, and bespoke natural play towers create a dramatic focus for the space. Materials used in the construction have been repurposed and upcycled from standing deadwood trees (air-preserved and reused as climbing frames), to greenheart groynes pulled from redundant Thames jetties to be used as climbing walls and benches.

With nature returning to the site already, and with a really positive reception from local residents, this new park offers a legacy for the local community and London.

Kidbrooke Village received the Mayor’s Award for Sustainable and Environmental Planning in 2020.