Olympic Park contract awarded
11 January 2010
Scandinavian company Skanska is to build the southern section of the 2012 Olympic Park including extensive new gardens and riverside planting. The contract includes the creation of the Great British Garden, designed by the winners of the RHS Olympic Park competition held last November.
The Olympic Park, on the site of former industrial land in east London, covers more than 100 hectares (250 acres) and will form the backdrop to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Work on the southern section, which includes the Olympic Stadium and Aquatics Centre, begins early this year.
Its star attraction will be the half-mile long London 2012 Garden, designed by Sarah Price, to celebrate the British passion for gardens. Sarah is also among a team of professional designers and landscapers helping competition winners 11-year-old Hannah Clegg and Rachel Read to finalise their designs for the Great British Garden before work begins to build it later in the year.
The creation of Britain's largest new urban park in more than a century has brought some of the country's best designers, landscapers and growers together. Hillier Nurseries in Hampshire is supplying more than 2000 semi-mature trees, while Salix River and Wetland Services is currently growing on more than 300,000 wetland plants in Norfolk for the north section of the park, a series of naturalistic habitats laid out in consultation with meadow-style plant designers James Hitchmough and Nigel Dunnett of Sheffield University.
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