Welsh care home project

Marleyfield House is a high demand care home in Flintshire which has planning permission for a 32-bed extension.

The scheme to improve the Buckley care home will include increased usable communal outdoor space and accessibility to support the wellbeing of the residents.

As the extension building utilises the land immediately to the south of the existing home, the landscape character takes on a rural context.

Our landscape design aims to provide a vibrant and accessible external space for residents and their families.

We wanted to ‘bring the landscape to the users’, creating accessible spaces around the building where people can enjoy sensory planting and views across the countryside.

We are using the topography to create an interesting and sensitive landscape design and, to achieve this, we have endeavoured to make a feature of the views, established boundaries and tree planting.

We’ll create a new terraced garden area for the existing Care Home to use and tie in with the refurbishment of the existing courtyard areas. The terrace garden makes a physical connection to the new build and encourages residents and staff to explore the garden space.

The lower part of the site creates an accessible garden area on the southern side of the new building. Semi-private patio areas lead on to a sensory garden for all the residents to enjoy. Seating areas and covered areas will encourage use and exploration.

We’ll retain the native hedgerows and hedgerow trees to allow for an instant backdrop to the new building and enhance it with new tree planting, naturalistic shrub planting and sensory planting in garden areas.

Low maintenance groundcover has been proposed for areas where the levels will be difficult to access, with accent shrubs punctuating naturalistic drifts of evergreen carpeting species.