New Broughton in Salford, Manchester, has been transformed by Countryside Properties, in partnership with Salford City Council and other stakeholders, to create an inclusive, vibrant, and attractive community where people want to live and work.

The development, which extends over 74 hectares, involved creating New Broughton Village, a sustainable community featuring more than 3,000 mixed-tenure homes and a range of community facilities, including shops, leisure, employment, schools, and training centres.

The landscaping products supplied by Marshalls played an essential part in delivering this vision, which is now improving the quality of life for residents, as well as attracting new visitors to the area. The local community was at the heart of the area's planning and redevelopment, and the specifiers worked extensively with residents to ensure an inclusive approach was taken to achieve an aesthetically pleasing, safe and low-maintenance hard landscape.

There were two main challenges posed by the landscaping elements of this project. The first was interpreting the feedback from existing residents into a coherent design, looking for outdoor areas to be created which were distinctly separated from vehicular roads. The scheme designers worked with Marshalls to work out how this could be achieved in reality.

The designers had to work out how to keep vehicular and pedestrian traffic separate and safe.

After considering various alternatives, the designers devised a spatial landscape that would result in the roads being separated from the footpath using a thin strip of land planted with a mix of grass, flowers and trees. As well as adding to the variety of the overall scheme, this design met the needs of parents who were looking for safe walking and play areas.

Once this challenge had been overcome, Marshalls’ Conservation X Block Paving in Charcoal was specified for the roadways. The darker-coloured Charcoal Conservation X Block was chosen for this element because it clearly denotes vehicular routes throughout the development while creating a more appealing aesthetic than asphalt, tarmac, or other bitumen surfacing.

The exposed granite aggregate setts create a stunning visual effect on the roads at New Broughton, and the use of Conservation X Blocks helped realise the designer’s vision of a contemporary public space. Conservation X Kerb in Silver Grey was used to complement the Conservation X Blocks.

The footpaths that were separated from the road by the treelined avenues were created using Marshalls’ Conservation X Flag Paving, along with Conservation X Kerbs, both in Silver Grey. Use of the lighter colour Silver Grey clearly denoted the pedestrian routes, whilst retaining a spatial link with the Silver Grey Conservation X Kerb used on the roadways.

Detailed and careful planning of deliveries was required on this development due to site restrictions on access times and duration as well as the size of deliveries, whilst working around the volumes of traffic created by the city centre site. The timing was critical in this aspect of the project and was the reason why Marshalls had personnel on-site to ensure the schedule was implemented as planned.

Shaun Martin, Contracts Manager at Birse said “As soon as Marshalls landscaping products were installed, we were able to allow subsequent deliveries over it. That was a huge benefit on what turned out to be a very restricted site. Once all the deliveries had been made, we simply removed any surface materials from the paving and moved on to the next stage of the project.”

The landscaping has made a huge contribution to the aesthetics as part of making New Broughton an area in which people want to live, settle and bring up their families. New Broughton is now attracting new residents, who recognise it as an attractive and thriving community where people feel safe, happier and have pride in their area.

This unique partnership approach to delivering the hard landscaping areas has helped capture the community spirit at New Broughton Village. The development itself has improved the quality of life for existing residents, which has added to their sense of pride and feeling of belonging to the area. It has also helped to attract new residents to the area, who have, in turn, stimulated the economy, creating investment and new enterprises for the benefit of the whole community.