Accessible nature trail

A 50-acre Cotswold Manor House Estate & Gardens, I redesigned it to provide full disabled access while making it an inviting, inspiring place for everyone to visit.

I designed the smooth and gently sloping paths and trackways to be safe and compliant with the UK Disability & Safety Regulations. I found it really interesting to research materials that would fit with the 18th-century stonework without imposing on it. Luckily, I discovered Harris & Bugg Studios were creating one of the fabulous Horatio’s Gardens for Chelsea 2024 and developing their own surfaces from recycled materials that can be colour-graded to fit the site and be perfectly smooth for wheelchairs. Charlotte Harris very generously said I could use the Eco-terrazzo (they will have patented it by now) for my college project. Genius!

The site has a Sculpture Trail that takes you around the lake and wider estate, to the woodlands and Fairy Island Nature Trail, which has its own more detailed MLP. Fairy Island is surrounded by the River Windrush. It has two bridges that take you onto raised and dipping sensory trackways, with a fully accessible hide looking out over the lake and further afield. The raised trackways take you gently up into the lower tree canopy, while the dipping trackway takes you on a subterranean journey where you are face height with the undergrowth layer. I hoped this would give visitors a really immersive, up-close-to-nature experience, which many people with disabilities often can't access. The entire estate has handrails, with braille information, a range of accessible resting spots, smooth paths and trackways throughout, and of course, wheelchair- and scooter-accessible gates.

Here, I’m including both Master Layout Plans and the working-out pages for the highly complex paths and trackways systems. Also, the Mood boards and sketches for actualising the concepts and designs for both (Images used within the mood boards are not my own and are simply for the ideas stage of designs). The MLP’s are A00 and A0, so the image size was ginormous, far too big a file to post on the gallery here. So I’ve had to reduce the resolution. But I’m very happy to send the Images to anyone interested in taking a closer look in more detail.