Trent Concrete GRC wall to feature at Chelsea Flower Show
Garden Designer Patrick Garland of Courseworks will be incorporating a GRC (glass reinforced concrete) wall developed by Trent Concrete in the RSPB/Severn Trent Water Bird Garden he has designed for the Chelsea Flower Show.
The garden has been designed to demonstrate a new approach to wildlife gardening, which can attract and benefit wild birds within a contemporary urban environment, whilst remaining highly decorative and functional for people. The Garden is based around a central seating terrace which appears to float within a naturalistic pond, fed by an ornate stainless steel rill which cascades down a series of large rock boulders.
Access to the seating terrace is via a number of metal gabions filled with reclaimed bricks. The garden would also include numerous energy saving and recycling systems including solar panels, a wormery and a rainwater collection system. The garden is walled and enclosed on two sides by panels of buff Portland stone colour GRC, representing a stylish boundary material that reflects the modern, urban location.
All the man-made elements in the garden were chosen for their strong environmental qualities and unique characteristics, comments Patrick Garland. “GRC fits these criteria perfectly, and has the added benefit of being lightweight and highly manoeuvrable for easy on-site assembly. It is a material I can envisage incorporating again in future garden designs.
The production of GRC is environmentally friendly, using low energy and emitting no contaminating gases into the atmosphere.GRC is proving an increasingly popular construction material with both architectural and civil engineering specifiers, as it offers robustness without bulkiness and heaviness, and is highly mouldable in a wide variety of textures and colours.
The RSPB/Severn Trent Water bird garden is on stand no. MA14 in the Main Avenue at the Chelsea Flower Show, which runs from 21st to 24th May.
Notes
Trent Concrete is a specialist precast concrete contractor, producing high quality bespoke architectural cladding and structures.
Providing a complete solution from detailed design development through skills-based manufacture to on-site erection using its own teams, Trent Concrete partners with leading developers and specifiers to ensure that their projects gain maximum benefit from prefabrication.
Trent Concrete's precast solutions make a major contribution to improved quality, certainty, sustainability, safety and efficiency in the UK construction industry today.
The company has worked on some of the most prestigious projects of recent years, including The Scottish Office and the Toyota GB Plc and Thames Water headquarters buildings, and the quality of its work is consistently recognised in the form of industry awards. Trent Concrete was founded in 1917 and employs more than 200 people.
Editorial contact: David Walker
Tel: 0115 987 9747
Email: lmason@trentconcrete.co.uk
Trent Concrete Limited - e-mail: quality@trentconcrete.co.uk