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Permanent Landscaping
 900 hectares of parks, open spaces, woodlands and allotments located over 450 sites are
managed by Coventry City Council, CV One and Whitefriars Housing Group. The core aims are to
provide all residents of Coventry with access to a public park or green
space for relaxation or play within a reasonable distance from their
home. Across the city these sites are being regularly maintained to a
high standard and wherever possible new landscaping and planting is
taking place.
The War Memorial Park is one of the city's most visited parks and includes a
variety of shrubs and features, including a sunken garden and one of the
largest collections of copper beech trees in the country. A heritage
lottery bid has been secured to restore the park to the days of its
former glory by reinstating many of the formal garden features that have
been lost over time with the addition of improved public facilities.
Created in the 1920's as a lasting memorial to all those who gave their
lives in the First World War, Coventry's War Memorial Park now stands on
the threshold of major restoration.
 On the back of a £2.8 million Heritage Lottery grant and matchfunding
from the Council, work begins next year to improve visitor facilities and restore the horticultural
and landscape beauty of the city’s premier park. Plans for the 50 hectare park include the restoration
of theme gardens and ornamental features, new tree planting, playing
fields improvements and ecological enhancements to give one area a
‘country park’ feel. A ‘Friends of the War Memorial Park’ group is
working with the Council and designers to create a park that
Coventry can be proud of, in time for the 100th anniversary of the
Great War in 2014. The park is also home to several of Coventry’s
most successful festivals including Godiva.
 Coombe Country Park contains many types of permanent landscaping for
visitors to enjoy, including woodland, lakes, formal gardens, wildflower
meadows and also a wildlife area and heronry. These are further enhanced
by seasonal floral displays. Coombe is also fully established in the
growth of its landscaping schematics, facilities and conservation
habitats.
 To enhance the appearance of open spaces in the city, parks and grass
verges are cut every ten days. Ornamental hedges are trimmed two or
three times each year, with field hedges trimmed annually. The
Allotments Association is also liaised with regularly to tidy up the
allotments and make them appealing to prospective gardeners.
School grounds are visited regularly with grass areas cut every ten days
also, pitches marked out weekly and horticultural services (shrub
pruning, bed maintenance etc) undertaken when necessary.
A new square is being planned in the city centre that has involved
public consultation. The design includes an avenue of liquid amber
styraci flua trees and lots of planters with new benches and a suitable
piece of public art for the square to provide a place for workers and
shoppers to relax.
 Twenty four roundabouts have been upgraded around the city to date with around
twenty eight of them sponsored. Investment in traffic islands last year was almost
£70,000, with some companies sponsoring more than one island. All
islands are sponsored by local businesses, with five committing to
sponsoring improvements and maintenance on a two or three year basis.
Various car parks in and around the city centre are adorned with low
maintenance landscaping of various shrubs and grass areas; wooden
planters containing acers adding a wide variety of colour, offering a
considerable lift amongst the sixties building designs. Belgrade Plaza
in particular has a vast array of shrubbery and subtle leaf planting to
liaise with its modernized trimmings, and incorporates many acute
attractions to an otherwise self-developing area. The Magistrates Car
Park is also aligned with greenery in the form of beech and deciduous
plantings.
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 Several business parks and commercial centres across the city enjoy
well maintained landscaped areas creating a pleasant environment for all
that work and visit here. Many businesses at Westwood Business Park have
extensive landscaping and sustainable planting, such as shrubs and
perennials that give year round colour. Barclays Bank is an excellent
example and has a lake surrounded by trees and shrubs in the centre of
their office complex. This provides not only a haven for workers during
a busy day, but also for local wildlife. The Coventry Business Park has
many attractive permanent landscape features including a roundabout
sponsored by Deeley Properties that is situated next to their new Head
Office.
Gallagher retail park and the Arena Park retail park also have been
designed with borders and large planters containing easily maintainable
shrubs giving colour during the winter as well as the summer. These
include pyracantha, mahonia, cordyline and phormium.
 The Herbert has established new facilities for 2008,
including a History Centre to show off the city’s nationally important
archives, new gallery spaces to host major travelling exhibitions and a
series of permanent galleries to highlight particular world themes. The
most innovative of these is the Elements gallery, a multi-sensory
exploration of the natural world, using the four ancient elements of
Earth, Air, Fire and Water to feature the full range of the planet’s
landscapes, from rain forest to tundra. As part of their journey of
discovery, visitors will be able to compose soundtracks to describe
their favourite landscapes, discover how birds take flight and hunt for
prey, explore minerals and gems from before the time of the dinosaurs
and create their own sculptures using materials from the ocean.
 The foyer area at the back of the
Herbert has been softly transformed with a Mediterranean polish as part
of the renovation work. Light
coloured Olive trees, shrubs and tidy verges generate an almost exotic
ambience to an otherwise idealistic quiet zone. Other plantings involve
bamboo and lavender, scenting the air with powerful, peaceful aromas,
along with benches and unforeseen reconciliation memories attached to
this plot, emanating the cities nostalgic past.
An ornamental bed planted with nectar rich plants to encourage bees and
butterflies surrounds the Registry Office. A bridge crosses a
picturesque bog garden using wetland plants that provide a thriving
haven for wildlife in the city centre as well as a backdrop for married
couples' photographs.
 On the outskirts of the city, Canley Crematorium gardens create a
peaceful and tranquil setting for the bereaved. It has four formal
gardens: the formal rose area, the seasonal area, the formal pond area
and the English woodland area. A children’s’ garden has been added that
has seasonal floral displays alongside more permanent shrubs and has
appropriate benches with sculptures of teddy bears and ducks as part of
the landscaping. London Road cemetery has also had around 12 trees and
1,500 shrubs planted to improve the entrance and view from the main
road.
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Coventry has over 350,000 trees and almost one fifth of these are in residential areas. Wherever possible
trees that need to be removed are replaced with an appropriate species to suit the local environment. Ornamental species
are often used as they have a smaller canopy and often with the additional benefit of providing pretty
blossom in the spring. If there is sufficient space, large broad-leaved species will also be planted.
In the last 12 months over 100 unsuitable trees have been replaced all over the city in
residential areas including: Sewall Highway (34), Harefield Road (32), Clovelly Road (16), Bulls Head Lane
(10), Stoneleigh Avenue (8) and Shirley Road (7). On Sewall Highway hard surfacing has been added to grass verges and paving
has been added near roundabouts. This has meant that effective parking has been provided whilst
retaining grass and trees.
A new housing development on the east side of the city that includes
some Whitefriars housing has been planned with low maintenance in mind, and sustainable planting that
lifts the area and helps blend the development into the neighbouring woodland.
 One of the busiest roads in the city, the Ansty Road, mainly dual carriageway in most stretches can
be difficult to maintain with some of the grass central reservations. To improve the local area, a trial of
artificial ‘Tiger Turf’ has been used on one stretch of the main road. This has been a successful visual
improvement to overlong grass, or closing a lane of traffic to cut the grass or even laying tarmac, and is
completely maintenance free.
Eight roundabouts in residential areas have been upgraded around
the city since last year to improve the local environment and have been landscaped with structural
components, year round colour, with minimal maintenance and sustainability in mind.
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 As part of this years Coventry in Bloom, many schools and team
projects have been prepped and established as part of the relationship
building strategies and landscaping proposals in effect around Coventry.
Vicroft Court was one example of community interaction, along with
Sherbourne Fields School, where not just floral beds were implemented,
but a brand new landscaped area for the children, including a rabbit
hutch run, brand new open green lawn space and a tree bark pathway.
 This year the Council’s landscapes team offered two students studying
Horticulture BTEC National Diplomas at Moreton Morrell Agricultural
College the chance to undertake summer placements. For 18 weeks from May
to September they are working in three core areas at the Memorial Park,
Coombe Abbey and on the public golf courses gaining an insight into both
the care of fine turf as well as traditional landscaping and gardening.
 A local voluntary group has worked tirelessly to recreate the Georgian
kitchen garden in Allesley Park walled garden. The group is steadily
restoring it to the days when it supplied fruit and vegetables for the
hall’s owners and servants. The walled garden volunteers organise
educational events and activities in the garden to celebrate its
history.
Warwickshire Wildlife Trust (WWT) has worked with local
residents groups and other organisations on a number of projects in
Hillfields to improve the surroundings.
 The East Street Pocket Park,
also known as Weavers Walk, was transformed into a play area
(incorporating a wildlife garden for creatures and insects, as well as
wild flowers to grow) from a piece of disused and neglected land. Four
recycling bins and a mosaic were created by community arts organisation
Arts Exchange and local school children. The entrances to the park are
based on the history of the area - Penny Farthing cycles and Singer
sewing machines, both representing the Roots in History theme for this
year’s competition.
WWT and residents from the nearby flats, worked closely with the
Groundwork team and a landscape architect Louise Kovarovic, to create a
'One World Garden'. Funding was secured from Your Neighbourhood Matters,
and the City Council granted permission to build the garden on a nearby
patch of neglected land that was a site for alcohol abuse and flytipping.
Jardine Crescent, a more deprived area in the city, is being landscaped
with 240 shrubs, six trees, and 4,200 bulbs and having footpath
improvements. Local schools and residents are helping to provide
community art and interpretive boards.
 The Colchester and Winchester Streets Flowerbed Improvement project was
part-funded by the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV)
People’s Places Scheme. Local residents group, the Singer Residents
Association, initiated the project and the funding allowed The Trust to
work with them to purchase tools and a tool store, to deliver training
and to plant smaller and more colourful plants to make the streets feel
safer and more attractive to both people and wildlife.
 The project involved children from Southfield Primary School, the
Gardening Club and Neighbourhood Wardens. As a result of their
involvement with the Flowerbed Improvement project, the Singer Residents
Association were named Best Community Group in the West Midlands by BTCV.
Warwickshire Wildlife Trust were later awarded funding from Awards For
All to work in partnership with Arts Exchange, a local community arts
organisation, and local people to improve the surroundings of the
flowerbeds through arts workshops.
Other activities include allotment maintenance, school ground
regeneration and team building, a commitment to planting more trees in
the suburbs of Coventry, and an educational tour of the new Herbert
centre, where youngsters can interact with the all-new Jungle
Experience.
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