Sustainable Business Network 45-minute Lunch and Lunch focused on nature-based solutions in Towns. Habib Khan from Meristem Design and Zoe Stirling-Wall from Ringway present solutions that reduce flooding, improve air quality and enhance biodiversity.
So yeah my name is khabib Khan uh I’m one of the founder and director of Mary stem design so if some some of you may have may or not have heard of us uh this our background is uh designing and installing a public realm uh green infrastructure which includes parklets
You may have seen some of our parklets across London we’ve done about 300 of them across the UK our mission is turning the open gray green so that is our mission statement and that’s what we’re focusing on uh let me just go to the next uh our service is green screens
Living walls parklets rain Gardens Street furniture and suds Planters we’ve been quite very busy working with local authorities so most of our clients are local authorities we deal with at 29 off London 32 local authorities at any point in time we’re always active with at least about half
Half of London authorities so we are we’re very busy around there although we do work outside of London as I mentioned before we work with zi County Council we go all the way to we’re working at the moment with Bristol B we’re doing one in the Midlands so uh we’ve just we’re just
Install some in uh Northern Ireland and we’re about to roll out some uh some of our projects in Republic of Ireland so and we very very busy picking up awards for our work so what are rain Gardens so some of you may be familiar with rain Gardens
Some of you people may not be familiar with rain Garden but the ones who are not familiar with rain Gardens uh let me just click into so a rain guard essentially Nature’s Way of slowing down uh the the the the rainfall during heavy downpours because the problems we have
At the moment is we have so much hard surfaces we built upon so much of our land that when it it’s a heavy heavy downpour our our Victorian sewer system just cannot cope with it so Nature has its own way of absorbing rain water slowing it down and capturing it and
This is this this you know 100 years ago we didn’t have flash flooding because obviously we had so much Greenery so what we’re now doing is trying to reintroduce uh Greenery uh to to to to slow the the water down so you know when we’re going to to
Install Rain Garden we really need to look at the rainwater modeling data so this looks at which way the rainwater flows which way it C it goes down the streets and where the nearest uh existing sewer connection pipes are so we can’t just pick where a rain Garden
Is to go we can do with Planters and Par but when when it comes to rain Garden the data and the rainf flow will dictate exactly where we need to put the rain Garden to capture the the rain water we do uh construction drawing so these show
This shows you you know the depth the width the height you know the perforated pipe at the bottom you can see this is how it looks a typical rain so you’ve got the curb edging along the sides here then you know we got the per pipe this normally connects into an existing
Utility uh connection could be TS water for London for example and then youve got the shingle layer the the subsoil and the membrane and you’ve got the planting at the top so this is a a very typical kind of traditional rain Garden crosssection the impacts of the rain
Garden are quite instant and you can see these are the ones in meron so there’s a school on the right hand side and this is the pathway that people used to come in the mornings in the afternoons to pick up the kids and drop them off this
Is only during a light rain shower um the sewer connection here is all blocked up all the silk goes into it and it’s just not there is a drain there but it’s just it’s it it’s never worked so what we did is we come along we ripped this
Up and we we did this with Merton Council um and then put you see on the right hand side the rain Garden that went in there and since then we’ve not had any problems uh with this particular location so it does show uh quite instant impact various curb options for
Rainwater channels so on the on the on the right hand side you can actually see sorry on the left hand side these are the ones that we’ve did in Hackney so this is quite a nice drop curve and allows the water to go straight in there
This is ones IM merg we have quite large Inlet channels that immer from both Sid and they both have like we call it aprons just allow to catch some of the the sediment the sil sediment on the right hand side this is probably one of the earlier models but it can show you
What happens if we just have gaps in the curb you can already see the vegetation coming out and when you’ve got autumn leaves that also blocks rain water and the rain water comes down here you really want it to go into this area uninterrupted and if you have got this
This vegetation it can it can slow it down so cross-section of what a rain Garden is uh this is a typical one so it’s subbase so the subbase can be aggregate Stone of some type could be shingle or you know we’re also looking at other systems like Hydra rock at the
Moment then you got a top soil layer you got you normally have a membrane between the sub base and the top soil to stop stop soil from going straight in there then you got the free board at the top and that free board is there for intermittent flooding so when you do
Have a heavy downpours we do get uh emails and photos on social media going look your rain waterers flooded you know your rain Garden flooded and we have to say to them well that’s is meant to do that it it intermittently floods captures the rain water and then allows
It to absorb into the top soil so I we we engineer our top soil so normally is 50% sand 30% top soil 20% compost that’s a really nice mixture that really kind of has a nice absorb absorption factor into the uh into the subbase layer uh so we also we do community rain
Garden as well so we’ve got about 30 Community rain Garden so we did this with Walton Forest so uh you know they come out during the outset they get they got involved with uh the planting of the the schemes we work with walon Forest buau Council and also there’s another
Contractor local architect called wtif projects and and and Coppermill Community uh group and it’s great could have come out on the day see them doing the planting help picking up the the correct plant for the that that M that go with a planting plan that we that was
That was drawn up for it we close the roads off and you know they made a bit of a a carfree social day out of it and it’s very popular and they basically after 12 months the community now look after it so for the first 12 months we
Do the watering the weeding the feeding after 12 months we handed it back to the community that was about two years ago and you can see this was taking not not that long ago and they they they still look fantastic we also do a lot of low tra converting
Low traffic neighborhoods into rain Gardens because youve already created this low carbon area to encourage walking and cycling um but a lot of the planters that went in there were temporary so what we were doing again there about 30 of them installed out of 35 installed in lamber and where there
Was previously you can see where the up the signs were they were previously Planters with this no car uh entry and the areas around there now be converted into rain Garden so it’s quite a nice way of kind of going to the next step uh rain Gardens are perfect along you know
Perfect long cycle Lanes you know you don’t you don’t have to have particularly wide rain Garden I mean this is about a meter wide so 1.2 meters wide and it’s great because it can capture the rain water from both the pavement and from the roadside and you know if it if it’s done
In this particular manner you’ve also got a green barrier between yourself and the car so we can put plants in there that also absorb a lot of the you know absorb a lot of the pollution from passing vehicles uh flooding across housing estate so we do work with quite a lot of local
Authorities like so the council for example here and what it’s doing is capturing the rainwater from the ex uh local Authority um uh housing stock uh the downpipe comes you can see it going in there you see the pipe going into these Planters these are 6 MERS long by
1.2 by 1.1 you’ve got a a guttering system at top that allows the water to evenly flow into the different Planters they are connected beneath each of them so we can do very very large roof areas using this this concept uh so when you do underground you know what happens when underground
Services prevent you installing a rain Garden because the rain Garden nor about 1 meter 1.2 meter deep but you know if you go into most Pavements anywh around at your town centers you will hit Services before you get anywhere near that depth um so what maintenance do they
Need as well again I’m going to pick up on the maintenance the maintenance of the rain Garden is you know collecting you know we do need to go out there I would say about 25 times a year do the watering the weeding the feeding on a
Typical kind of rain rain rain Garden in the second year it really does it really does drop down so you really don’t need anywhere near as much watering or weeding probably need about six monthly visits in the second year and in the third year probably down to about three
Or four times a year because the roots get established the trees get established but for the first year you definitely need to have a some kind of a maintenance which is what we do uh this is this is the system using a hydro Rock So this has got a hydr rock
System I I’ll explain how that works in a minute but that allows you to store water and that then percolates a water up into the plants we do have planting schemes for rain Garden so this is the one uh for the for the shade so when you’re putting a rain Garden in these
Are the kind of plants we put for the shady areas for the partial shady areas we have a different planting scheme and when you got a full sun so not all of our rainu will look the same so depending upon if it’s in a shady area or or or a sunny area
We do need to pick the right planting mix for that and we do a planting plan so this is like a typical planting plan it’s actually got trees in there you got some walkways in there You’ got foot path in there so you know you do need a
Planting plan for a rain gun you need to pick the right plants that are D tolerant but can also handle intermittent flooding schools we’ve got uh got one in five lar schools uh are affected by flooding um it is a big area so we we are working on doing a lot of
Rain Garden outside school so uh this is uh what some of the ones in uh our local Authority project so uh they so they what we do again we outside of schools we also have a problem because you have uh uh parents that just ignore the double yellow lines and the zigzag and
They just park outside and they wait for their kids to be dropped off or picked up and that causes huge problems for pollution and idling outside the school so a bit of a double whammy is to wind up put a rain Garden outside of the schools where this would be ideal
Perfect spot for parents sit in the cards iding away waiting for their kids so what we’ve done is we put rain Garden outside of the schools and again schools love it because they can get involved in the actual planting of the rain Gardens and you can create a bit of a what you
Need to do is just create a bit of a educational program around the planting so you know what edible plants what are not edible plants you know how you need to look at them and what you know a lot of the tree as while the children school children can get involved in uh
Selecting the the plant species and the tree species a lot them tend to go for Edibles and a lot of the herbs get used in the kitchen as well uh this is one of our bigger ones which is St Mary’s primary school 200 square meter rain Gardens outside the
School so it’s you know we’re very pleased with that one we you know we we go back there and it’s it’s great because the kids really do enjoy seeing the rain garden and a lot of the plant they they were involved in picking the plant species so they can actually see
How well their plants are doing as we also trct we always install plants that attract pollinators so it’s quite a nice one here to you know look at the encouraging biodiversity by the by the rain Gardens and I said we do we also provide connecting children with
Nature workshops so that’s quite a nice way of kind of using this as an excuse to to to roll those out we do a lot of rain Gardens in playground so this is this we did this with the London B hounds low the school here floods every
Single year and has a huge flooding problem I think when they laid this surface down they didn’t have the rain the the rainfall drop correctly it should have gone from left to right it doesn’t it’s rais a little bit on in the middle which creates pooling and the
Water just wasn’t going out so what we did is you know dig up dug up the planting area and huge roots and an old tree there and we created a rain garden and since then we’ve not had any flooding uh also the down pipes here all connected into this rain Garden then it
Goes out connects into the this thing sewer Network so um we also uh s plant is in school so you know we work with the mayor of London the great London Authority funded by the DFE and TSW so part of that where was 564 Planters in C
Two schools in in one year um and it was I said it was funded by uh the mayor of London it’s kind of climate resilience school so that that was a program that it was uh brought in under so um this is another system we have we’ve got two
Types of system that we use for our Suds Planters uh so the ones we were doing with the schools are using a standard um standard uh shingle with a membrane with a Suds Planters above it but we also do have another Suds planters that we we are now
Testing and trying out this has got an orifice restrictor that allows you to slow down the rain water and it goes out so this is this is for a utility company based in in the North and then this this is another product that we’re trying at the moment called Hydro Rock and this
Allows you to store the water here and then it slowly kind of percolates the water up into the soil so it means you need less watering of the plants so but the ones we did for the the GLA with the standard shingle construction we also have a hybrid approach remember I was
Saying before that not all surfaces you can actually dig down into just because you got so much uh surfaces below ground so what we did is a bit of a half and half where half the rain W the rain Garden is actually puding up so from
From street view if you down down the High Street it just looks like a standard Planters but it’s actually gone below ground you can see a water inlet there 20 mm that allows the water to go in you can use hydrock or shingle and that allows you to like water the plant
Above so it’s it’s half a planter half a rainu it doesn’t have a base in there this is what it looks like these are the Cen Planters so you can’t really see but that’s actually we cut out the uh Tac at 200 mil and we dropped it into
The surface there you can also do it on soft ground as well so we are working with local put some of these into uh the school playing field so this is where you’ve got playing field that’s flooded and what they’re doing is putting these kind of rain Garden Planters in the area
How much water is collected to be honest it’s completely down to the size of the suds plant itself as to how much water is stored and uh reduced um Innovation include you know if you want to have flow meter weather stations uh you know Suds Hydro Rock so
A lot of these are available uh you know the GLA worked with Kings College London I think I might have seen Holly uh on the on on one of the attendees today but she worked with Kings College London there’s some fantastic data about how effective the Planters were in uh collecting uh rain
Water um throughout the year we also provide School audits so that’s something we do do we do do with businesses as well so we look at the down pipes and look at the areas identify locations for rain Gardens and sud Planters we do the whole 360 we do the Horticulture planting St Design
Insulation maintenance and educational program so we’ve been been keeping ourselves very busy in this in this area uh just to finish off with the Royal dockland Corridor so this is we did this with uh new Council uh who did the did the some amazing design so uh if
Any familiar with the world dockin it’s it’s a very builtup urban area some people say it’s kind of quite deprived as well in in a lot of places and just not a lot of greenery because it’s all been flattened to build up new uh properties so these are the
Visualizations again the mayor of London and New Council LED on this and this is a visualization of what they need to look like so a lot of planting along the road you can see the dockins down there so it was at 5 miles of continuous uh rain Gardens along the the dockland
Corridor this is britania Village in Silvertown way so we started planting last March so this is what it’s like when it it went in uh in March and this this is what plants look like in in that town the year but you can see how uh the
Dock on on the left hand side you can see they created a bit of a swell system so this is before we did all the The Mulch so it does show you to stop the water from just flowing straight down from top to the bottom create little breakes kind intermittently spaced in
Different areas and it just slows the water down so if you got especially if you’ve got a long stretch and you got a bit of a drop you do need to create this kind of breakes in between the rain garden and so you can see it collected
The water from the the foot path and from the Road and you can see the Overflow of drains here they got a really nice system of of collecting silk so this is silt straight from the road collects into the silt track before it goes into the the
Soil this is what it looks like today so you know when often when we do the planting people go it doesn’t look very good is it I said no no it you just have to wait you just have to wait till the till the seasons come in and uh and yeah
This is what it looks like this is the same stretch there’s hardly any square inch of area that’s not full of plant so we’re very pleased with that we’ve also been busy picking up a ward so uh this is uh you know with this is one for our
Suds plant to work with the mayor of London was submitted to the flood and Coast Award by by Holly and her team and we were delighted that we we we played a part in that we also picked up uh the surain community Awards with the wal and
Forest uh Council so so yeah I mean you know from Syria draining systems are environmentally beneficial in cusing long-term damage to intimate so that’s what Sirus say we need to be a bit careful about putting plastic creating in the ground we don’t encourage putting plastic creating in the ground there’re
Everywhere lots of companies do it but you kind of think are we storing ourselves problem for the future so just be a bit wary we do have attenuation systems that use natural materials and not plastic so just to be aware of um yeah these are the type of systems we’re
Using we’re doing this with Sur Council as well using hydro Rock which is which is basically used from crushed rock systems we also put them in trees so so yeah we need to consider whether we need plastic based Solutions but I think that’s the end of my presentation thank you very
Much okay I pass it back to you beex fabulous thank you so much wow what a whistle top tour I think we’re all reing from such incredible photos and imagery of of stuff that’s really happened and I think that’s really exciting about this this space it’s kind
Of new and developing so rapidly and thank you ever so much for sharing such incredible solution thank you very much a that was really interesting and then will be few crossovers with mine but it’s good you’re the expert so that’s great um right so you know who I am um
So just in relation to my role with sustainability because sorry about the train in the background so I’m at Mero today which is a working Depot so apologies you might hear lots of different noises in the background um so Mero is is our main Depot in Sur we have
Um three other depos as well so I um look at sustainable materials products um EV um alternative fuel services that obviously have um a positive impact in the environment rather than a negative and also a positive impact on society and biodiversity so um I look at reducing
The Virgin materials we use on the contracts and how we can reuse or recycle more and then improvements on reducing our waste and waste management and um Reliance on Main’s water and also how can we best reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also I do training education and sort of
Engagement um this is a picture from last August bit different to our weather at the moment um so we do well-being walks that the the social Val manager and I take out so this was on a a nice day last summer um so one of the things I do with
My job is organize visits um to different places to show the vision of what we can do because I think sometimes it’s difficult when you’re talking about ideas for people to visualize it so I think actually going somewhere can really help so one of the visits I
Organized was to the World Wildlife Fund HQ building in woking which is one of the greenest buildings in the UK you can go and do a tour there it is well worth it so they use all recycled materials um in their building they don’t have artificial air
Con and heating it’s all done naturally and um they have a gray water system a rainwater system they’ve obviously done lots of planting in their Garden and Water Management so it’s a really fantastic place um to V visit so I wanted to show s County Council the
Vision for what they could do with their depos because a lot of the je depos are due to be um upgraded in the next sort of decade so this was to show all the things that have worked really well for the world wildli fund and the potential
F for implementation at um the depot was in Sur so yeah that was a great visit and I love this uh picture of us all on the on the tiger and one um view of the Gardens so um another thing I look at is obviously not just how we um resurface the roads and rebuild things but also what we’re putting on top of the road so obviously fuel spills are a problem on the roads and very tox and if they’re not cleaned up quick enough the whole
Road then has to be resurfaced um so fuel spill digestor that is the name of the company as well as their product um they have a product that originally was um found it’s a bacteria that was originally found in the Sea of Japan and they didn’t know
What to do with it so of course the Americans um have painted it and developed it so it’ss it’s e eco-friendly it eats hydrocarbons and it’s safe to go down drains so um first of all it was used like in food manufacturing plants and then when it
First came over to the UGA uh the UK it was used on like um fuel full courts and garages and um when the company in the UK did a demo to the fire Services they said you know this is fantastic and you should speak to National highways and highways
Contractors so we um got them to come and do a demo last December in the morning so nice dark cold morning and um it’s less manual intensive um because you dilute it with water that you put it on The Spill and then you um sort of
Activate it by brushing it with a hard brush and then you don’t have to clean it up so it’s a lot less work for the operatives and it will keep eating the hydro carbons and it’s safe to go down drain so you’re not adding sort of more
Issues or more pollution um so yeah this year we will be um trying this on our contract and yeah it’s looking yeah fantastic will make a big impact positive impact and then um also sort of biodiversity sits under me so I don’t know if you’ve heard of nature metrics
There a company in the research Park in Guilford so they do biodiversity testing um it’s nice easy testing if you can see they do send you sort of test kits so you can do it yourself or anyone and then you just send it in for testing
So this is a really good way if you want to um show your improvements that you could test an area that you haven’t developed yet for biodiversity and then obviously test it annually and you’ll be able to show um good improvements so I’ve been to visit nature metrix twice
Um once with my colleague Adnan who’s the Innovation manager and then the second time with Viv and Vicky who you can see in this picture who are Siri ecologist and then in the middle is Laura who works at nature metric so um Siri used nature metrics for testing but
They didn’t realize all the different things they offer so we went for a visit to talk about everything they offer and then also how we could um collaborate on projects in Su so um that’s really exciting then um another part of what we do um come sits under us is if there’s
Any animal crossing so on the left of me um it’s that there’s a toad Crossing which is also big enough for badges This was um put in at the drift um in East Holley at the beginning of last year um and then on Sur ecologist finger that’s
A Great Crested n to a rep protected species in um the UK then also talking about sort of education training engagement um last year I got the Sur ecologist to come and do two workshops for um Sur County Council and my ringway colleagues um to make sure that when people are are
Planning schemes um they think about breeding Seasons legal requirements um and compliance and also that they know we’ve got ecologists in Sur that they can check things with um so from this year we’ll be doing annual biodiversity workshops and then some other workshops I’ve done a a net zero recycling plant
And materials which obviously have an impact on waterways and biodiversity then um these are two pictures from um the depot and Mero Depot in Sur from last summer so we take place in a workplace In Bloom competition annually um and obviously we’re working on increasing our sustainability but also attracting
Biodiversity by what we plant um so thinking about having more perennials and um how we can preserve or conserve water better and have sort of self-watering Planters then we went to visit um Rosman Community Garden in Guilford which is yeah a fantastic um garden and people
Can go and volunteer there and we um went to meet them this was I did with the community and place uh manager for ringway Carolyn J so about where we could collaborate and um they kindly said they’ve got two poly tunnels one they use and the other one they’ve
Offered to us if we want to go and do um uh um get some seedling going or different things for our our workplace In Bloom we can utilize the polyal and also if we want to use the area for for composting so that was fantastic and
Then also what we did is we got them to come to our Depot to merrow to give us advice about how they think we can improve on sustainability and attracting biodiversity um so yeah that was a lovely visit and then this sort of ties in to norbury park Sur mails um which sits
Under Sur County Council we went with the community garden my colleague Carolyn Jane the Community Place manager to um see how we can um utilize obviously local organizations more so they also use um a youth support organization called skill Mill so we already use skill Mill for um vegetation
Clearance but with the work they’re doing with the Sawmill um we’re looking into whether we can get them to build us some new planter and then going forwards like bird boxes back boxes insect hotels um if we you reuse some tanks um for water rain water if we can get them
Cladded so that’s a really sort of nice tie in um to corporate social responsibility and sustainability as well um and the um s mail also offered some free um planks for the community garden to use so that was a really positive um visit and something we will build on that relationship going
Forwards and then um as already been touched on by B I was just going to touch on a sustainable Urban drainage system or Suds um I won’t go over this because obviously khabib has covered a lot of this um but in um at Meo so last August
We had a a graduate graduate sorry civil engineer started Susie Martin who’s doing her first rotation in Sur with ringway so she sits in the structures team but she does one day a week with me because she’s really interested in sustainability um so we gave her a a
Project to lead on a Suds project rain water Garden project because as you can see um from this picture last year there was a pro with water pooling in the car park at Arrow not looking very attractive um and yeah obviously then when it would freeze it would become a health and safety
Risk so what um Susie has worked in is um putting some swells in and then it going across um to a a rainwater Garden so um this will be planted in the ne in the coming months so hopefully if we do a a a recap of this meeting next time I
Show you this will have some lovely plants in um and the curbing put around the swell on the left that’s all recycled Curbing and then um my sort of future aspirations is getting more Suds and rainwater garden projects out on the Su Network so one started on the network
Yesterday so in future I have more lovely pictures to show you hopefully like khabib um and then um what I’d really like to do is research alternatives to rock salt for gritting because obviously that has an impact can have an impact on waterways and biodiversity as well as alternatives to
Weed killer and then yeah funnily enough Ben’s on this call um with Caroline my colleague and I we’re gonna work with Ben on some Urban Greening of su so looking on how we can improve the air quality and increased biodiversity especially outside primary schools and that sort of ties into what beex
Mentioned at the beginning about how bad some of the air quality is in Sur um and then also um as I mentioned with nature metrics and the Sor ecologist earlier what projects we can work on with them like conservation birges Wildflower verges any sort of water projects like studs or um read
Beds um so yeah lots of great things happening and in the in the pipeline and I put any questions but Beck said obviously we’ll we’ll come back to that so thank you very much I’ll stop sharing now thanks so much that zie that was really insightful to see you know
Projects in train at the moment for um for S and some really local examples so we can all pop down to mer to see uh that rainwater Garden how it’s developing that’s fantastic great stuff so I guess this goes over to um the audience now for our Q&A um uh I can’t
See any questions in the chat so I’m assuming everybody has been holding on to the the questions that they like to um to um ask today so if everybody fancies it please feel free to put on your videos um and um we can um take any questions you may
Have we’ve got a quiet Bunch today they’re all busy I know it could be the wrong setting that I put on the uh I had a question I had a question for Zoe yes uh you saying you’re doing air quality outside schools can you tell us
A bit more about that project yeah well it’s probably is Ben still here or has he gone is Ben still here beex uh let me see scroll up and down it should be still here let’s see no I think he’s dropped off sorry he was okay yeah so let
Me let me um oh I can’t sh my scre so it’s yeah it’s looking at um making more like corridors within Sur and especially running outside um primary schools um so can we do um you know Hedges that block some of the air pollution coming from the roads but also plant pollinators to
Increase biodiversity so um Ben and um one of his colleagues they’ve sort of highlighted some of the worst areas like especially outside primary schools that he wants to focus on first so um he spoke to my colleague and I about would we like we to be involved which we would
And then also what we’re going to do is going to get our supply chain to support us as well because this will obviously be a long-term plan because we want to do the whole of Sur but we’ll start with Guilford and obviously the worst areas um for air pollution but um yeah it’s
Sort of Ben’s baby that we’re we’re just supporting in but yeah it sounds like a really exciting project that should start this year we we do a lot of work obviously we mentioned today about the suds Planters and the Rain G at the front but we we’ve done like over 120
130 schools for air pollution which is the instant hedging the pregrown green screens along the the perimeter fence um and that really does make a huge impact on reducing the improving the air quality within the playground so yeah well so I mean that’s what I was thinking you know when you were talking
Obviously I need to have stay in touch with you and um yeah there’s lots of things you can um support us in so um yeah that was good meeting you today that’s a good start to another flourishing collaboration right for me it was really fascinating to see the maintenance
Schedule AB for the rainwater Gardens because I think that was going to be my question that I was going to ask you because often people look at projects and think right what are The Upfront costs what’s going to what’s it going to take what’s the capex that I need to
Have to to set it up and get it going solve this problem but I think fundamentally the longer term uh challenge is always around maintenance and uh it was really interesting to to hear that actually it needs 25 visits in the first year to make sure it’s
Maintained it looks beautiful I mean my question is like what about all the litter and is are those um as as the water goes in clearly there’s a lot of sediment I think you call them sediment pans like forgive me if I’ve got the terminology wrong do
What do you have to do to keep it looking amazing you do need Horticultural visits and we do collect litter because litter does go go into it you know you do need it’s it’s just like your garden any any Garden you need need to the feeding pruning removing uh Dead
Leaves we REM mulch every single year but unlike our Planters or apocalypse that need almost the same amount of Maintenance every single year the rain Gardens don’t it really does taper off because what you need to do is to get the roots established of the of the
Plant and the trees and and and the more the more they established the more they can cope with our long dry Summers so it really does taper off from say 24 down to 12 down to six and then zero maintenance just because it’s I mean you
Know during six months of the year they will be quite well looked after by the by the rain because they’re located in a plane place that will naturally collect a lot of rainfall but it’s just in the summer months maybe they could just do
With a bit of help which is why we are bringing in uh we we we use rock wool because that then Waters the soil and keeps the water therefore 28 days because shingle doesn’t do that rock wall doesn’t rock wall is sry our Count Council are using them on quite a few
Schemes so they’re one of the the bigger users and we use them as well because you know it rather than normally the excess water goes into shingle that goes into the perforated pipe that then goes out where what you really want to do is store that water water and for the next
You know for the next 28 days it can help it uh help keep the plants established so I think the other trick is just to make sure that the planting species you’re using is correct because it helps us being landscape landscape that uh gardeners have begin with but we
Picked the right plants you know in the winter it’s not full of deciduous plants because it looks Dead uh you know have a nice nice nice green selection Evergreens um and you do need to look at the ferns you know how you know how sorry how sunny or Shady that that rain
Garden is so the ones in the world duckland half of them were underneath the the DLR so it was quite Shady for half the day not all the day then the rain go on the opposite side of the DLR got Sun all day long and you look at the
Plant Spees that were very different from one side of the road to the other side of the road but yeah it does help doing that and a lot of the cycle Lanes now we are using it could be very similar hedging to what you you’re talking about for the schools because
You can you can I’ve got other slid where we put them along cycle Lane and they’re 1.2 MERS high and that what that does then it collects the the suck from the the tires and the brakes and that’s that soup off this particulate matter is what goes into people’s lungs and it’s
Part of the pollution of it but when you put a leafy barrier it does stop it it captures it it sticks to it you know if you to have like a glass ballustrade the pollution would just hit the glass or other the brick wall and go over it
Where when you when it goes for vegetation the vegetation captur it and sticks it to it so it it it does reduce the pollution by about 40% the studies are shown by about 40% from one side to the other so you know it it’s it’s having so many benefits of having you
Know a a rain Garden plus it’s it’s capturing pollution and it’s helping to protect the cyclist as well on the cyclanes yeah what so there’s a a potential cyclan in the birth area which is a stretch into Guilford which is you know potentially an an opportunity to
Ensure this kind of work goes in there I mean we’ll see whether that um initiative T takes off but um the um Sur University have got team for Gare and they’ve been monitoring sites and they’ve actually worked they’ve got a great case study with sanfield school of
Putting green screen up there um and um yeah so we work quite closely with them and so it’s more where we’re at at the moment we can we’ve seen the huge benefits all these things are happening and we’d love more organizations to do
More of this so um Zoe I’m just G to put you on the spot and say is there one thing that you’d like people to take away from this this talk today well I just you know if you’ve got space in your garden to put a pond in or
Something like that or rainwater Garden um or if you’re in a flat could you put um some window boxes in and grow some herbs and some pollinators or if none of those things are doable for you it’s very interesting the World Wildlife fun have a um um a
Footprint that you can do on yourself like an individual personal footprint it’s well worth um having a look at that because yeah it makes you sort of rethink some of the things you do so yeah I think that’s very beneficial too right fa so sorry that was three things
Rather than one and for all our businesses that have joined or maybe some of our collaborating organizations is there anything you want to to to say as a final couple of words yeah whether it’s outdoors or indoors planting is essential you know I think I think with
The when we had the the lockdown I think people who had Garden suddenly realize how valuable it is to have a garden and even if it’s a small Terrace Garden get lots of pots you know get lots of pots of different heights to just surround yourself and the studies of you know the
Workplace you know it reduces the amount of absenteeism it improves people’s mental health you know it makes them more creative I mean there thousands of studies I can send you links to them and it’s amazing but he’s research who’ve done that you know it does also have a
Financial benefit on your bottom line because you got good staff and they’re retaining and they’re happy and they’re creative so whether it’s in the office surround yourself with plants we do even the office we’ve got here you can’t really see it from this room but we we
All we’re surrounded by plants and we do do indoor plants but you know if you got some outdoor space You Got a Car Park it’s not why just waste it on cars surely you can find some part of that car park and have it like an outdoor
Seating with lots of plants and the seating grab a cup of coffee you know go out with your colleague and just just sitting around you know trees and plants and pots and you just feel know you just kind of it really does make you much more creative so I think you know one
Thing to take away for businesses is you know even even if you don’t do you know huge amount of interventions having some plans is a very cost-effective cheap way of improving the health and well-being of your staff fabulous great now we haven’t had any questions question from
The floor apologies if you wanted to ask a question but have not been able to probably because of some technical box that I have not ticked to prevent you from doing so if that anybody does have any questions we can follow up um via email afterwards um and
I know Zoe and khabib are very happy to answer any questions you have umib I love the links to th those pieces of research and what I will do is send around afterwards a quick summary um to everybody who’s registered so again if you haven’t registered and you was sent
The link by some a friend or colleague um let me know your email address I’ve put mine in the chat so that you can can request the additional info as well as the recording from today I’m going to let you go five minutes early um because
I know everybody will be very um busy I just wanted to to let you know of our next event is um the um 14th of March it’s a fireside chat which is going to be hosted in person at the University of su by Hannah Kirkland um and that will
Be looking the construction industry will have three experts who are operating the construction industry and they will G be giving their insight into what they’re doing to drive Net Zero forward um and The Wider sustainability space so do join us in person if you can
Do uh kickoff is at 9:30 um but the recording starts at 10:00 um and if you can’t join us in person it will also be streamed online as well so join us in person or online for that event on the 14th of March and the last one was
Fantastic so looking forward to that finally thank you so much um khabib and Zoe for a wonderful talk from you both today really incredible insights and um hopefully we’ll go go forward with um positivity of what we can do EXC yeah that’s great thank you very much for
Your time nice to meet everyone bye take care cheers bye bye