View Road, Cliffe Woods Village, Kent

Our work has included advising on landscape character, views, mitigation, LVIA, landscape design, play, and collaborating with the ecologists to achieve Biodiversity Net Gain. We have supported the team through pre-app meetings and discussions with the local authority.

Part of the site is a commercial orchard, we wanted to recreate this character within the scheme, creating a new central community orchard space, the idea being that residents (existing and new) can ‘sponsor a tree’ and benefit from the fruits and get to know others in their community.

There is a sensitive woodland to the east (a SSSI and ancient woodland) and therefore the scheme includes an offset from this feature of at least 30m. There is a reservoir to the south-west which, whilst outside of the site boundary, is an interesting feature that hosts a range of wildlife including birds. Our intention is to create a walking route around the reservoir, with a series of information boards to bring nature and the seasons to people’s attention.

We are also incorporating a network of play trails through the scheme, and benches for quiet contemplation.

There is also more to Cliffe Woods. Writer Lena Kennedy and her husband originally bought a plotland here, as she writes in her autobiography, ‘Away to the Woods’ which tells the story of her early life, how she wrote by candlelight, recited poems in the woods and loved her garden there. This old woodland community, known as shack dwellings, because of the shacks that the community lived in, is now the Cliffe Woods village that we know today. ‘Lena Kennedy Gardens’ is just off View Road.