img(height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=2939831959404383&ev=PageView&noscript=1")

Procurement pointers for landscape and drainage products

There’s a distinctly sci-fi feel to this month’s landscape and drainage specifieds – or is it all a flight of fancy flashback to the psychedelic sixties?

Brickslot discreet drainage
ACO

One morning, when Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed into a beetle. He lay on his armour-like back, and thought of his life’s ambition: to establish an insect water park in the vast, hidden drains that ran through his university campus. He headed out to the longest, straightest, SuDS slot channel, sat astride a fragment of twig, and threw himself in. The efficient flow carried him swiftly to a delightful swale beset by trees and wildflowers. And all around him were a thousand feeding birds…

aco.co.uk 

Blanc de Bierges paving stones
Haddonstone Group

Inspired by locations where nature is venturing back into territory long ago claimed by man, the MoD at Andover has embarked on an audacious rewilding experiment of its own.

Coyotes in San Fransisco, boar in Barcelona, and a puma on the streets of Santiago are quite something to live up to – so the MoD has landscaped to attract the most elusive creature of them all. The Andover Sasquatch is known to adore a custard cream; but this cunning trail of biscuits is by Haddonstone – appetising, yet tough enough to survive those mighty jaws.

blancdebierges.com

Extensive sedum green roof system
Blackdown Green Roofs

 
Translated from the original goat: ‘Monkeys of Wales: We, the Kashmiri Markhor of Great Orme, being established in the outcrop “Llandudno”, issue orders for your so-called civilisation. No new building within the Goatdom shall be constructed without multi-level Blackdown Green roofs planted with sedum, rockery and alpine plants, supplying sustainable, comfortable interiors for Monkeys and platforms above where your Goatish overlords may gambol and nibble in kingly splendour while monitoring and directing your degenerate carryings-on.’

blackdown.co.uk/
 

Jakoustic reflective fencing
Jacksons Fencing

 
Such a relief! I thought something terrible had happened. Couldn’t hear the children playing in the playground over the back – and no traffic noise even! It’s though every living human has been snatched off the streets of Southwark and banged up!

Turns out that Jacksons Fencing really means it when it says the solid 1.8m panels of its Jakoustic Reflective acoustic fencing reduce noise by up to 28dB, aiding cognitive performance, well-being, motivation – and blood pressure. I am so calm! Really looking forward to our theatre trip tomorrow.

jacksons-security.co.uk/

Latest

9 July 2025 from 9am to 11.15am

RIBAJ Spec: Offices and Workspace Design webinar

The women’s mosque, on the edge of Doha’s new Education City,  is a dazzling, surprising and generous structure, and a calm contrast to its outscaled urban setting

Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s women's mosque in Doha is a dazzling, surprising and generous structure

A new wave of ultra-modern, architect-designed homes is being built in Scotland’s most remote locations, writes Isabelle Priest, author of a new book on the subject, who also picks out five examples

A new wave of ultra-modern, architect-designed homes is being built in Scotland’s most remote locations

Room for all Stages is a cantilevered extension protruding from a 1950s semi. Architect Simon Banfield and engineer Matthew Wood explain how they acted as designer, engineer and contractor

Room for all Stages is a cantilevered extension protruding from the back of a 1950s semi

Lead two projects at a former Harland & Wolf industrial site, revitalise a 1930s theatre complex, reimagine the public realm of a famous urban market - some of the latest architecture contracts and competitions from across the industry

Latest: Outer Hebrides industrial estate