*Disclaimer*

*To protect the client’s privacy, I have been asked to remove the title blocks from the initial designs*

Working alongside Transform Landscapes, I was given the task of creating a shelter belt for a client’s garden in Frensham, Surrey.

A shelter belt (or wind break) is a type of planting normally used to provide shelter from wind and protect from erosion. In this case, it was needed to provide the client cover from viewing their neighbours pool area.

Below are examples of shelter belt planning and planting.

I was given the brief on an A0 print out a topographic survey of the client’s garden. As seen below, my managers lightly drew onto the A0 plan with a pencil to show where they intended the belt to be.

My managers described the belt as needing to be ‘kidney shaped’ and must allow for the mini tractor lawn mower to access the garden.

As we had been provided with the topographical survey as a .dwg file, I was able to start designing the garden digitally immediately. I used the poly line tool to initially draw out the shapes, and then used the grab handles to adjust the dimensions as required. I added hatching to define where the planting would be, and coloured it green using layers to destinguish it.

Below is my first attempt at designing the shelter belt using AutoCAD.



The overall shape was definatly heading in the right direction, but it wasn't quite right. For instance the lawn mower had no access or movement points, and there was no labeling for the trees (How many or types of). It needed a lot of refining. There are 5 phrases to this project, each which are lined out in the following blocks.

Below is a brief example of the time it took for each phase of this project to be completed.

*Disclaimer*

*To protect the client’s privacy, I have been asked to remove the title blocks from the initial designs*

The design required a lot of adjusting. Usually what would happen is that I would send the drawing to my manager, my manager would then print out the design and draw the adjustments onto the printout, then hand it back to me. I would then go on to apply the adjustments and give it back to him to check. The cycle went on until all parties were happy that the design met the brief and client criteria.

This was all about developing the drawing and the tree positioning. I used a multitude of tools including the spline tool, the hatch tool and the normal line tool.

Below you can see the sketches me and my manager made to illistrate where the design needed to be adjusted. These drawings are in cronological order left to right.

Frensham Shelter Belt - Part Three

The final design has taken a while to refine. It seems simple, but it is effective.

Here are a few things that I did within the design:

• I have positioned trees along the curved lines to allow tractor mower access.
• Trees along the lines are staggard to allow minimal gaps through the foliage to see the neighbour’s house.
• Larger trees are staggered also, to ensure that when the client is driving along their drive the neighbour’s house is entirely covered.
• Additional larger trees are scattered where there are currently tree gaps in the existing foliage, or where the existing foliage has few lower branches.
• There are two types of hatching. Green hatching signifies dance flat planting of shrubs and other smaller plants. Yellow hatching signifies raised planting along a to be constructed hill of shrubs to cover the lower areas of the trees.

Below is the final Design:



It needed to be to scale so that when used on site the builders will be able to work out where the trees are to be placed. Additionally, it allows everthing to be marked out on site easily.

The work to build the shelter belt from my plan has been quoted for £120,000.

The client has accepted the quote and work is currently going ahead.

A 1:500 scale was preferable as on a scale rule 1:50 is standard, so it is easy to convert.

Throughout the design process one of the most important tools that I had at my disposal was being able to visit the site. I was lucky in that I only live a five-minute drive away, so frequently visited. My initial designs were done without visiting the site but once I visited in taking photos everything started to make sense.

I created a simple map on pad using the previous design to visually show where I took the photos from. This allowed me to go back to the exact spot and take more photos show progression of the site being built. See below the map and the first photos I took of the site and the most recent photos.

When the design was completed and the trees where beginning to be planted, I had to plot the positions of the larger trees. These trees are between 4.5m and 9m tall. Their positions needed to be plotted on the design to ensure that we had planted enough trees. The client had also decided he wanted a few larger trees so this allowed us to decide where they should be planted. Below is the original drawing I did on site, and to the right the secondary final drawing using CAD.



I ended up going back to site another day as I had to label the design with the names and abbreviations of the currently planted trees. Again, see the sketch version on the left and the finished version on the right.



Even though the initial design has been completed and they are currently planting trees on site my design is still going through changes. For instance, the client decided that he wanted a hedge along the driveway, so I added that to the design below. I also went back that day with my manager to measure the heights of the trees that need to cover the house, which is what the height lines are on the plan.



As the project continues to be built, there is no doubt I will end up making more adjustments to the original plan. The mass planting is now being completed as the final trees are now planted.

As an experiment, I decided to play around with a topographical survey. After using one in my main project, I figured it would be worth a go trying to use a topographical survey to make a 3D model of a garden.

A description of a topographical survey:

It is typically accepted that points are positioned in three dimensions which facilitates ground modelling and visualisations to be produced from the topographical survey.

The topographical survey that I had to work with was a few years old but was a good one to try out with as the garden is very steep. This meant it would be obvious if I had gotten the gradient correct.

I used Revit to create the model. Even though I haven’t used the program for a while, I still remembered how to use the toposurface tool to place points. I inserted the topographical survey on level 0 and then got to work using the toposurface tool on the upper levels. I made sure to place points on the survey points with the correct height values to make the plan as accurate as possible.

This was fun to do, but as it was not a normal topographical survey with lines, I was unable to use the easy way and the points took so long to do it wasn’t worth it in the end.



Once I had made the 3D model, I attempted to render it. I had quite a few bad attempts as seen below. I ended up figuring out that the reason that they didnt look so good was because if you render longer the better the image will be. These renderings where only for a matter of minutes.



Once I realised that I needed to render for longer, I left the model to render for over a hour and these where the outcomes. They look much better, and if I was doing these models for a client I would be happy to show them these images.

Certain types of tortoises are kept in tortoise tables. Tortoise tables are enclosures that contain a hide and a large open area usually without a lid. This allows air circulation and helps to maintain a low humidity. My mum owns a Tortoise who has grown too big for her table. Below is her current table.

To make drawings easier to compare I used CAD to outline the accurate drawing. Then I was able to overlay the two drawings along with the satellite image and ensure the accuracy, which was truly little.