Introduction and background to The Road to Mayflower
2020 marks the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower from Plymouth UK to Plymouth Massachusett.
Plymouth’s local construction and built environment professionals are keen to play their part in preparing for the Mayflower 2020 commemorations. We have joined together through the Building Plymouth partnership, to ‘get on board’ for a construction industry led Mayflower400 ‘Adopt a Street’ project - The Road to Mayflower.
This project is endorsed by Destination Plymouth, Mayflower400 and Plymouth City Council.
All voluntarily pledging help and support, The Road to Mayflower team is made up of professionals representing the following organisations (from left to right above):
Oliver del Mar – Currie & Brown, Andy Gordon – KPMG, Adam King – AECOM, David Skelton –WBD, John Lee – SWH, Louise Creber – AECOM, David Bayliss – Stride Treglown, Emma Hewitt – Building Plymouth, Steve Warren-Brown – YGS Landscapes, Rachel Dyer – AWW, Ian Sanders – AWW and Karl Friedrich – Hoare Lea.
Our Vision
To transform the appearance of Embankment Road focusing on arrival and departure at Marsh Mills roundabout, including Gdynia Way and up to the Cattedown Roundabout, in order to deliver a world class visitor impression of Plymouth, Britain’s Ocean City.
More details on the overall project can be found at our Road to Mayflower pages on the Building Plymouth website.
Creating a green gateway at Marsh Mills – The Mayflower Forest
As hard working volunteers of Plymouth’s construction industry, we have now launched our crowdfunding campaign to build the ‘Mayflower Forest’ as part of our community engagement efforts towards a lasting legacy for Mayflower400.
As The Road to Mayflower team, we plan to deliver a new landscape design to revitalise Marsh Mills Roundabout as a green gateway transforming the visitors’ arrival experience as well as delivering significant environmental benefits.
With your help, Marsh Mills Roundabout will become the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ project for The Road to Mayflower and for the residents of the city.
The volunteering design team, led by construction experts at AECOM, AWW and YGS Landscapes, will create a simple yet sophisticated landscape design to revitalise the roundabout in order to improve the welcome and departure experience on the main gateway to the City of Plymouth, and to leave a lasting legacy for 2020.
Our design will focus on creating an urban forest of silver birch trees and using local stone to create an artistic dry river bed - directly relating to the Native Americans using birch to make canoes and shelters. We propose to use as much of the pre-existing scheme as possible, and plant over 1000 trees.
Adam King, Associate Director of AECOM and leading Landscape Architect, said: “Our vision is to retain the best elements of the existing green infrastructure and enhance them, to provide an elegant sophisticated green gateway to the city. As a global construction consultancy working very closely with the city on major infrastructure projects we are delighted to offer our CSR, design and other volunteering time to reinforce our continued commitment to the regeneration of the city. This fabulous legacy project further demonstrates our sense of civic pride and community spirit.”
Steve Warren-Brown, Managing Director of YGS Landscapes, said: “As a proud Plymothian I am thrilled for my company to be involved in delivering this fantastic project and given the heightened profile of environmental issues this is a timely investment for more trees to be planted which will significantly help to reduce pollution. We hope the local business community will get on board and help us make this legacy project a reality.”
Ian Sanders, Director of AWW’s Plymouth office, said: “We recognise the opportunity that Marsh Mills offers us to create a green gateway to the city but we can’t deliver our exciting designs without a successful fundraising effort now. Through creating the Mayflower Forest, our design nods to the Native Americans using birch to make canoes and shelters which is an interesting link to the wider Mayflower400 commemorations.”
Trees bring real benefits to our cities, health and wellbeing: Reasons we need to plant more
Trees have 350 million years’ experience looking after our planet. Luckily, when modern cities started to form someone had the clever idea of planting trees there too, so we could enjoy the benefits they bring even in our urban communities.
And our urban trees are pretty amazing. Not only do they provide a source of beauty and interest in the otherwise bleak urban landscape, they have crucial environmental benefits and give all us city-dwellers a place to relax, away from the stresses and strains of everyday life. As trees grow they help stop climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the air, storing carbon in the trees and soil, and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. Trees provide many benefits to us every day.
But our urban trees have come under increased threat in recent decades and we are now at risk of losing the lungs of our towns and cities. Every day more than 50 urban trees in the UK disappear; as a result of aging, disease or simply increasing city sprawl. With 80% of us now living in urban areas, we now need our trees more than ever for the following key reasons:
- They produce Oxygen
- Carbon and carbon dioxide, storing it and soaking it up…
- They clean our air
- Protecting us from flooding
- They’re keeping things cool
- A helping hand for wildlife
- They’re good for our mental health and wellbeing
- Because we love trees!
Benefits to the residents of Plymouth
Through planting over 1,000 trees, our new landscape design will transform the visitors’ arrival experience as well as deliver significant environmental benefits for local people of the City.
Our Mayflower Forest on Marsh Mills Roundabout will deliver:
- Improvements to aesthetics and visual amenity so that the concrete jungle of the city’s main gateway becomes green, lush and so much more attractive
- Biodiversity especially for insects and other invertebrates with the installation of species rich grasslands
- Carbon sequestration – important for the highly polluted area of Marsh Mills
- Sustainable urban drainage
- Trapping particulates on leaves to improve air quality
- An improved key gateway into the city – impressing visitors and enjoyed by residents who use this highway regularly
- Ongoing seasonal interest
- Support for Plymouth’s Plan to increase its tree cover
How you can get involved as a business
As a team of volunteers, we urgently need the business community to help – we are seeking 400 pledges of £100 to create a green gateway at Marsh Mills Roundabout.
Please show your civic pride by investing a minimum of £100 for the Mayflower Forest today!
By supporting this legacy project we will:
- Publicise your contribution widely through social media using your logo
- Create a ‘Friend of The Mayflower Forest’ certificate for pride of place in your office
- List your business on our website
- Invite you to the VIP opening of the Mayflower Forest
When you donate please email your logo to [email protected] and look out on LinkedIn for announcements regarding your generous donation.
Emma Hewitt, Skills Co-Ordinator at Building Plymouth, leading in partnership The Road to Mayflower project, spoke about the campaign: “As a team of committed volunteers, we now urgently need the business community to help us – we are seeking 400 pledges of £100 to deliver our vision of the Mayflower Forest. Every pound counts and we also welcome donations from local people who wish to show their civic pride by investing in this project. We have until 18 September to raise £40K so time is of the essence!”
Stuart Elford, Chief Executive of the Devon & Plymouth Chamber of Commerce, said: “As the Greek proverb said ‘A society grows great when people plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit’. The Chamber is delighted to endorse this volunteering legacy project and we are proud to kick-start this fundraising campaign by donating the first £100. We urge our local business community and the people of Plymouth to get involved and help us to build our Mayflower Forest, which will be a fabulous welcome to our great City.
How you can get involved as an individual
As a team of volunteers, we urge local people of Plymouth to join us in creating a green gateway at Marsh Mills Roundabout. It’s not very often we can be part of something so big which will be a legacy for years to come.
By financially supporting this legacy project:
* Your name will be listed on our website and celebrated as helping us to build the Mayflower Forest
* You will receive a Mayflower400 badge (for donations over £20)
“We salute the public spiritedness of the Building Plymouth team behind The Road to Mayflower. It shows our construction and built environment professionals of the city in the best possible light, as well as creating a magnificent green gateway entrance to Plymouth once again.” Cllr Sue Dann, Plymouth City Council Cabinet Member Street Scene and the Environment
Contact
To get involved please contact:
Emma Hewitt, Building Plymouth
07825 263742
www.buildingplymouth.co.uk/road-to-mayflower
Follow us on social media:
Linked In – Emma Hewitt
Twitter - @buildplymouth
Facebook – buildingplymouth