Liz Lake Associates were appointed by Lungfish Architects on behalf of the jointly run Rushmoor and St Andrews Schools in Bedford to provide landscape design and planning services for a new, single school and sports facility on a greenfield site in North Bedford. The new school with be a ‘through school’, catering for children between the ages of 3-18yrs. As such a diverse range of facilities and experiential opportunities were needing to be provided.

Working within the brief to make the most of the elevated location and it’s expansive views, LLA undertook the design of all on-site external areas, including car and coach parking, play areas for early years pupils, amphitheatre external classroom and circulation and access path network. This challenging 40 acre site has a c.30m level change east to west with DDA compliant access required between the two parking areas for which LLA provided a full levels and preliminary earthworks design.

Using the principles of a Forest School education, various habitat types were planned to provide a number of active learning opportunities. A broad range of soft landscape and biodiversity enhancements were developed for the expansive site including improvements to hedgerow connectivity, new woodland planting and establishing swathes of wildflower meadow planting. Through these interventions LLA were able to demonstrate a net gain in biodiversity to support the Planning application which achieved consent in January 2022.