The brief required a practical tool to guide future development of the Pinetum. It was made clear that the masterplan should be visually appealing, easily digestible, functional and suitable for the Bedgebury Team, external stakeholders and the public. A web-based interactive output was requested, to avoid it “becoming a tome that collects dust on a shelf”.
Developed over a 12-month period, the masterplan was shaped through close collaboration with Forestry England staff, volunteers, visitors and stakeholders. Our landscape architects, managers, ecologists and GIS specialists worked together to create a technically robust and engaging plan. It is presented online as an ArcGIS-driven story map. This web-enabled format allows users to engage more flexibly with the plan content, depending on their interests. Internally, it is a co-ordinating plan that supports cross-team delivery. Externally, it communicates Forestry England’s priorities and provides a platform for engagement on future projects.
In 2025, we were proud to win the Landscape & Parks Management Award at the Landscape Institute Awards, with judges describing the masterplan as “a benchmark in the presentation of a management plan – innovative, forward-thinking and digitally immersive”.
Special thanks go to Dan Luscombe, Curator, and Emma Bacon, Nursery Supervisor, whose knowledge and commitment helped bring the vision for Bedgebury to life. The resulting masterplan is now actively shaping decision-making on site and can be viewed on the Forestry England website here.
This project forms part of a wider body of work supporting the stewardship of nationally important landscapes. Our ongoing collaboration with Forestry England continued into 2024–25 with the preparation of the Thetford Forest Resilience Plan, setting out how the UK’s largest manmade lowland forest can adapt over the next 60 years to the threats posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, pests and pathogens, and social pressures.
