Bourne Amenity headline sponsor Podium Awards 2019
BALI Registered Affiliate member Bourne Amenity are proud to be attending another fantastic BALI event, the sold-out East Anglia Battersea Power Station Development Tour early next month. Bourne Amenity are one of the event's sponsors and are looking forward to networking with industry colleagues and meeting the Battersea Power Station buyers.
Relatable to the large-scale developments being integrated into the Battersea site, after working with architects, soil scientists and contractors on roof gardens and podium schemes for almost ten years, Bourne Amenity has seen how beneficial they can be to the surrounding area. Aside from their primary role in storm water management and biodiversity, they provide non-tangible benefits to general health and well-being within dense urban environments. The mainstream use of these systems has led Bourne Amenity to develop an ever-increasing range of planting substrates that constantly evolves to match the imagination and ambition of the client and designers.
Bourne Amenity were first enlisted to blend a soil for podium planting back in 2007 for a project in central London where there was no official specification, save for a maximum saturated weight requirement. The saturated weight of the planting medium is the primary concern on these projects and they were challenged to come up with a lightweight solution to help reduce the load burden, whilst maintaining the structural and nutritional integrity of the topsoil. Bourne Amenity started by carrying out a series of growing trials on a variety of blends to ensure that the material would perform across drainage and nutritional indicators, as well as that all-important bulk density. Ideally, the dry weight needs to be as low as possible without compromising the structure or performance of the topsoil. Understanding the increase in weight upon saturation, (now known as Field Capacity), whilst providing adequate drainage was an important lesson that has kept the firm at the forefront of Roof Garden & Podium planting projects.