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The HISTORY of REDDITCH New Town

'We tried to structure the planning of the new town on the basis of the existing vegetation,
so that hedgeland and important trees were all part of the planning process. Basically,
we built on the natural vegetation that was already there and extended it into new
development using the same species.
The best example would be to look at some of the roadside landscaping on the Warwick
and Alvechurch Highways which demonstrate native vegetation used to give spring time
cover and autumn colour. This is repeated on a smaller scale in the housing areas where
we have retained existing hedges and trees and used the native vegetation. We didn't
use exotic species like leylandii, we used hawthorn, ash, oak, lime and silver birch etc.
We tried to plant species in each area
which were appropriate to the
topography and the microclimate. At
Headless Cross, for instance, you will
see quite a lot of pine, silver birch
and broom and similar plants which
like a drier, sandy soil, whereas in
the lower areas such as
Matchborough and Winyates you will
find that we used species such as
ash, oak and hawthorn which tolerate
these wetter conditions. The soil in
Redditch is really quite heavy and
clayey and although rich in nutrients
it was very difficult to work in the
The urban landscape is dominated by trees which winter months.’
provide a natural setting for urban development.

'Masses of wild cherries were planted for the spring, and for the winter I used the grey,
shrubby goat willow (which survives all the fumes from cars) against fir trees and filled
in with rich, red dogwood. On the
road going up to Saint Augustine's
school, Walkwood Drive, I provided
apple trees to give those lovely
spring flowers and, later, autumn
fruits so that the children can pick
an apple and eat it on the way to
school. They haven't abused this
facility so far.’
'It's very difficult to put a figure on
the number of trees planted. We
had Sydney Chapman, MP, to plant
the plane tree outside the entrance
to the Kingfisher Centre in 1973
and that was supposed to have
been the millionth tree. If you Trees planting at Matchborough East. 1995
count up all the trees that we
planted after that it must have been about five million or more. Most of them were planted
when they were about two or three feet high. We had a bit of a set-back with elm disease
because that took away a lot of fine trees that we were preserving.’

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