Thursday 8th July, 2021

The award-winning landscape design that we created for the Moneypenny HQ in North Wales is now a whole five years old. We’ve kept in touch with the team at Moneypenny to find out if their employees were still enjoying the grounds for picnics, fruit picking and lunchtime strolls. And they have reported back that the landscape grounds are flourishing!

The planting is now more mature, with hundreds of trees providing shade, habitat and food for both birds and insects, and the long swaying grasses giving texture. We also ensured that hundreds of seasonal bulbs were planted for a year-round cheerful colour. Ten saplings establishing well were taken from a 500-year oak tree that was already in the grounds, ensuring its heritage lives on for many more years.

The landscape was designed primarily for the employees to enjoy and provide a solace from a busy working day. Apples, plums, damsons and black cherry trees were planted throughout the grounds and are seeing their fruit starting to grow. We love that picnic blankets and picnic baskets are provided to the staff for full lunchtime enjoyment in the meadow.

The site was designed to grow and evolve, providing a stunning setting for many years to come.

But how is the landscape faring five years on?

Chief Operating Officer at Moneypenny Ceri Henfrey told us: “Over the last five years, it has been amazing to watch the gardens mature and transform into somewhere our team can really enjoy, whether that’s relishing in a picnic at lunchtime or a simple re-charge of the batteries in the fresh air of the woodland walk or stopping in at the allotment to see how the veggies are coming along. It’s grown and bloomed fabulously providing the perfect habitats for the busy wildlife and a haven for everyone at Moneypenny.”

Director Phil Hepworth from AEW Architects, who designed the new HQ, added: “It’s great to see employees enjoying their building and the landscape now it has matured greatly.”

Moneypenny is a telecoms provider based in Wrexham in North Wales and regularly features in the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For. The brief for the large landscape project was to create a landscape in the 10 acre grounds that was relaxing and enjoyable for the company’s employees.

After the project was completed, Moneypenny won the British Council for Offices’ Award for the North of England and CW Studio was a finalist for the Society of Garden Designers Awards in 2019.

Photo credit: Tom Biddle Photography

Wednesday 20th February, 2019

These precious handprints have been created by some of the children at Claire House Children’s Hospice in Clatterbridge. We are creating a garden for the hospice on behalf of Greenfingers Charity and will be including these handprints in a colourful canopy called the Creation Station. What a special project this is to us.

Monday 14th August, 2017

We are so thrilled to have been part of the brilliant design team, led by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, that was shortlisted to design a new centre for bereavement counselling services for those affected by the death of a child within the Alder Hey Health Park in Liverpool.

It was such a special project that could not fail to touch your heart. We designed a landscape that aimed to provide a sheltered and reflective refuge, offering a place to grieve and escape and to connect people with nature.

The image above is by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios. More on the scheme here and here.

Monday 5th September, 2016

It’s so exciting to see Moneypenny’s new £15m headquarters in Wrexham complete. CW Studio designed the landscape for this striking new building by AEW Architects. It’s designed to accommodate over 1000 staff and has a tree house for meetings and a village pub.

The building is set in a ten-acre landscape and boasts dramatic views over meadows, woodland and an orchard, to the countryside beyond, all designed to create a happy, relaxing and inspirational setting for employees and visitors.

Employees and visitors enter along an Irish blue limestone walkway through a landscape of tall, swaying grasses, echoing the natural landscape of the meadow beyond. Hornbeam hedging gives structure and defines the space. Solid granite welcome benches with Artscape etching by Hardscape terminate diagonal crossing paths and are enclosed with tall grasses.

A timber deck leads from the building to a wetland filled with filtered surface water, while a wet meadow detention basin holds any overflow in severe weather.

An orchard provides apples, damsons, plums and black cherries for the staff to enjoy. All species were chosen to provide fruit for the staff to enjoy throughout their working day, and Moneypenny provide picnic baskets and blankets so that people can sit in the meadow at lunchtime and eat apples from the trees. It’s so wonderful to see the staff loving their new home.

Moneypenny has been the perfect client and it was fantastic to get such lovely feedback from Ed Reeves, Moneypenny co-founder and director, who said:

“CW Studio has exceeded our expectations with this project. Carolyn has been a joy to work with and has delivered something that we’re truly proud of.”

Some planting numbers!

• 1750 trees
• 500 bulbs
• Over 1000 ornamental grasses
• Over 1000 wetland plants
• 12,000 m2 wildflower meadow
• 10 oak saplings from the 500-year-old oak tree on site were transplanted and replanted in the meadow, to protect the heritage of the tree for at least the next 500 years.

Photo credit main photo: Aliva UK

Wednesday 31st August, 2016

I love sketching. I’m not the greatest but sometimes it comes out ok. I tried life drawing but was pretty hopeless and my sketches reminded me of when I was twelve. I recently joined the Urban Sketchers Manchester for an evening with Simone Ridyard (whose sketches are exquisite) for an evening of sketching at Castlefield, Manchester.

My first sketches weren’t great, but this one, my last one of the evening, I felt I’d finally captured something of the scene before me. It reminded me of when I was a theatre designer and used to sketch all the time. When we’d finished we went to the pub. Must keep this one up!