Page 195 - Redditch People

Redditch People

In 1964 I got a job as Chief Landscape Architect for Redditch New Town, by which time I
had qualified in Landscape Architecture. I was given the job of landscaping the whole of
the new town. I had to work with engineers, architects, estate officers, social development
officers and all the other disciplines employed in the new town. I likened it at one stage
to providing a new suit of clothes for a new town.

'At that time I was living in a very modern house in Kingswinford with my wife and
nine-month old baby daughter and the journey was horrendous, it took about an hour to
get here. We looked round for a property to buy and found a virtually derelict Queen Anne
cottage on the outskirts of the town.’

I wanted to make Redditch a decent place to live in. One of the major concepts of the new
town was to respect the topography, and to that end we decided that we should only build
on lower-lying land and leave the higher ground for open space or woodland, so that the
view across Redditch would be a green one. This was very successful during the life of the
Development Corporation but it has now been rather transgressed by newer development
promoted by the Redditch Borough Council and so the integrity of that concept has to
some extent been lost.

‘We also wanted to make sure that everybody who lived in Redditch had immediate access
to a feeling of the countryside, with its trees, shrubs and water courses, and that they
wouldn't live in a very hard, urban structure but in a green and pleasant place. I think that
by and large, that has been successful.’

'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 winter
months.’

'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 count up all the trees

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