The first stage of a major landscaping scheme at Dovegate Prison in East Staffordshire has been completed with the help of local MP Janet Dean.
The MP for Burton planted the last of the 5,400 trees and shrubs which form the advanced landscaping on the site of the 800-place prison which is being constructed by Kvaerner Construction.
Construction at the prison – previously known as Moreton Prison - started in September last year on the former Ministry of Defence brownfield site. The advanced planting, designed to obscure the prison from local communities, included endangered poplar trees which match those in a nearby National Forest as well as 200 larger ornamental trees.
Kvaerner Construction has worked with landscape architects, Capita Property Services, and the Prison Operator, Premier Prison Services, as well as Staffordshire County Council and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, to ensure that the work not only obscures views of the prison, but also significantly improves the area.
It has excavated four new lakes that cover more than 30 acres of the site. Earth extracted from these has been reused on the site, keeping some 40,000 trucks off the local roads.
A further 9,452 trees and shrubs will be planted in the next planting season between November and March. Aquatic planting around the lakes starts in May with 2,100 white lilies, 62,500 oxygenating aquatic plants and 8,600 marginal aquatic plants due to be installed. More than 16,500 Norfolk Reeds will also be planted at the lake edges.
Altogether 229,620 squared metres of grassed area will be included in the prison site, almost 116,000 squared metres of which will be wild flower meadows.
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