Green space – landscaping, parks and gardens – are less discussed but no less vital layer of construction that can greatly affect end-users’ experiences of our buildings. Even in the densest urban environs, landscaping, green spaces and parks can elevate and enhance a building’s ambience, usable space and sustainability.

On projects across the US, from dedicated park spaces to urban offices to educational campuses, Balfour Beatty is leveraging innovative solutions and market leadership to build outdoor spaces just as enticing and inviting as our indoor environments.

Connecting with Nature

More than ever, public clients and private developers alike are focusing on efficient, sustainable and aesthetically pleasing uses for outdoor space. Whether a property serves solely as a park or contains green space within or between buildings, outdoor spaces provide visitors with opportunities to connect with nature and enjoy fresh air, all while contributing to the holistic benefits of less concrete and more greenery in our communities.

In North Texas, with space largely constrained by over a century of compounding urban development, our projects’ green spaces often occur within or between much larger vertical construction.

On the Perot Family Turtle Creek Campus, a multi-building office complex built for the titular family’s multiple business ventures, lush outdoor landscaping intersects with the buildings themselves in unique ways, including abundant natural light and a strolling garden built over the below-grade parking garage that created significant logistical and design challenges.

“Building an embedded green space, especially one over a below-grade structure like the Turtle Creek strolling garden, is a delicate balancing act of timing and solutions,” says Chris Wolfe, vice president of operations in Texas. “We coordinate carefully within our own project team and with the client and consider environmental conditions to ensure green spaces are appropriately waterproofed and plantings are placed at optimal times so our clients’ investment in landscaping is successful.”

Deck park spaces and green spaces within a building’s footprint can’t benefit from the natural drainage of ground soil, so we regularly deploy other solutions like waterproofing membranes, concrete additives and water recapture to ensure these planted spaces can thrive without impacting the underlying or surrounding building.

Of course, water recapture also presents another opportunity to increase the practical and community value of green spaces by boosting sustainability and resiliency.

Balfour Beatty’s teams in the Carolinas are recognized as industry-leading park construction experts, with recent accomplishments including the now complete Downtown Cary Park and the ongoing Dorothea Dix Park, both in North Carolina.

From the outset of planning and design, Cary Park was carefully crafted to merge seamlessly with the area's natural environment. By prioritizing tree health, preservation of native and existing vegetation, water quality and minimal wildlife impact, Balfour Beatty built not only a beautiful park to serve the Town of Cary for many years to come, but a harmonious and sustainable extension of the North Carolina Piedmont landscape.

"Building an environmentally sustainable park was core to Cary's mission and our partner's design work," says Ian Kremen, project manager. "Cary Park displays the full suite of our green space capabilities and the bespoke environmental solutions we can build into any outdoor project, including native plantings, efficient lighting, water retention and recycling systems and many more."

Beyond adding new and sustainable features, Balfour Beatty worked tirelessly to preserve nature's own engineering within the park area. Our team partnered with the city's arborists to protect countless trees, both before and during construction activities. For any trees near the end of their lifecycles or otherwise unable to be retained, our team and trade partners instead ensured these vital natural resources could still serve the park's sustainable mission as recycled wood for benches, protective mulch layers and other features.

In California, Balfour Beatty is proud to maintain and continuously improve on our success as the Engineering News Record’s top education builder. Education, perhaps more than in any other sector of development, is trending toward extensive and usable outdoor space. In many ways, even new K-12 schools are often designed and built in a multi-building, higher education campus style.

“Many education clients in California are interested in facilities that don’t just involve outdoor space, but actively encourage students and educators to enjoy the outdoors,” says Sacramento Vice President Kyle Frandsen. “We build schools with a campus-like approach to design and construction that makes greater use of available space, promotes student mental health and provides new educational opportunities.”

Balfour Beatty’s education-related green space experience extends to any and all features an education client could want on their campus, including playgrounds, open play fields, multi-use sports fields and the landscaping that ties all such spaces together.

In fact, Balfour Beatty’s California teams are so well-versed in green space construction that they now do it in their free time. Every year for the last 13 years, teammates have participated in the Green Apple Day of Service by building outdoor classrooms for campuses across the state. Usually situated among landscaping and other features, these green learning environments don’t just transition students from indoor learning to outdoor play – they meld the two entirely with a distinctly natural ambience, rough-hewn stumps for seating and more.

“Our Green Apple Day outdoor classrooms are a great way to give back to the communities we cherish, but they also showcase our expertise with the green spaces that can make student experiences so special,” Kyle says. “New and established client school districts alike know we excel at these unique projects and trust us to deliver them.”

Lean, Green and Sustainable

Budget-conscious sustainability is an important goal for many clients across our US operations, both private and public. In outdoor green space construction, Balfour Beatty leverages solutions that often accomplish both missions simultaneously.

In Texas, where extreme heat and drought are both relatively common occurrences, water conservation is of paramount concern to our clients and communities.

“Landscaping and parks construction, at least here in Texas, is primarily concerned with the availability and value of water,” Chris adds. “Our teams build parks and green spaces that combat this threat on two fronts, both proactively and reactively.

To get ahead of the issue, many clients choose native plantings, naturally drought-resistant landscaping and even reusing as much existing flora as possible.

In addition to planting extensive beds and landscaping features with native Texas plants, the project team for the Perot Family offices also did the nearly unthinkable by successfully excavating and relocating a 112-year-old southern live oak tree to serve as centerpiece to the new office layout.

The tree – of a species native to the area and especially hardy in the hot Texas summer – held special significance to the Perot family. Our project team took ownership of the Perot family’s mission and spared no effort to ensure the tree’s safe relocation. After careful root pruning, excavation and transportation across the jobsite on specialized rolling airbags, the tree was successfully positioned in its final location. Today, the tree continues to provide shade and enduring beauty while also mitigating the high water demands typically associated with planting young or non-native trees.

The Perot offices also utilized extensive groundwater capture, water recapture and rainwater collection through its strolling garden and retention of all collected water in buried cisterns.

Ultimately, this sustainable irrigation system eliminates the need for our client to purchase water from franchise utilities to maintain the campus landscaping, thereby reducing the load on local water utilities and benefiting the entire community.

Water conservation is as much a concern in the Carolinas as anywhere else in the US, so Balfour Beatty built Dix Park to both take advantage of the occasional heavy rainfall experienced in the area and to withstand prolonged period of drought, all through stormwater capture and runoff recapture and retention.

The park, like many new parks in communities with young families, features a splash pad play area with water features. Rather than simply drain the water runoff into municipal or stormwater drains, however, Balfour Beatty installed the necessary infrastructure to recapture the water and irrigate the rest of the park with it.

Water enters the recapture system elsewhere as well. Rather than build a more expensive asphalt parking lot, our team built a water-permeable crushed stone lot with a system of perforated piping beneath it, allowing runoff to gradually replenish groundwater. This unique solution benefits both the health of all nearby landscaping but also reduces risk of stormwater drain overload during heavy rains.

“The Carolinas recently exited a prolonged drought, but we also experience coastal weather patterns that can bring intense rains,” Preconstruction Director Tom Booth adds. “With a combination of recapture, retention and reuse, we can provide clients with solutions for any budget that create beautiful and useful outdoor spaces.”

Our Carolinas teams are also well-versed in building green roofs, which dually provide an outdoor space for recreation and relaxation and also reduce water runoff by instantly recapturing and reusing rainfall on the roof.

On the ongoing North Carolina History Center on the Civil War, Emancipation and Reconstruction Foundation project, a new museum in Fayetteville, Balfour Beatty helped our client arrive at a green roof solution that met both budget and sustainability goals. Roughly one-third of the museum’s roof is laden with several feet of topsoil and sustainable green landscaping to reduce runoff, and any excess runoff is routed through a drainage system and into cisterns that feed ground-level irrigation around the museum.

California experiences relatively less rainfall than other parts of the US, but our teams still help clients arrive at green space sustainability solutions that fit every project and budget.

As in other locations, drought-resistant landscaping selections are imperative. Our California clients, especially public school districts that serve as stewards of public funds, also often choose low-maintenance plants and hardscape features. Every reduction in the need for pruning, cleanup, disease treatment or reconfiguration represents compounding savings for many years to come.

“Clients trust us to build outdoor spaces that are just as sustainable and cost-effective as they are useful and beautiful,” Kyle adds. “Sustainability isn’t just a one-time benefit, but one that we build into projects to provide clients with a lifetime of value.”

While building the Sierra College New Instructional Building, to both offset the hard surface runoff and prevent impacting the local stormwater drainage infrastructure, Balfour Beatty built a large water retention basin that regulates the reintroduction of captured water. Of course, such basins necessitated by design also present another opportunity to landscape the area. Native plantings and other features further tie the basin to its surrounding landscaping and add to the project’s sustainability with more green space.

Prepared to Grow

Whether building community-anchoring public parks or simply private areas of respite for urban office workers, our teams provide solutions that meet and exceed our client's most important targets: budget adherence, environmental sustainability and protecting and valuing our home communities.

With a combination of native landscaping, unique irrigation systems and water recapture, we help our clients become and remain good stewards of nature, connecting and enhancing our beautiful buildings with equally beautiful outdoor spaces prepared to grow, thrive and benefit visitors indefinitely.