What’s that mound of earth behind the new Library? We can reassure you that we are not building our own sand dunes on campus, nor is it a modern art installation. It is actually yet another way in which the Green Heart is living up to its green credentials.

As we begin to landscape the Green Heart this July, we will lay 12,750m² of grass area including turf, wild flower meadow and seeding before completion in 2019. To that end, the earth mound behind the Library is specifically a large pile of topsoil. This has come from the old sports fields which are currently being redeveloped into new 4G sports pitches.

Rather than waste the soil from those pitches, we have moved it to behind the Library for storage, until it can be re-purposed under the Green Heart’s new lawns. Through cross project team collaboration, we’ve boosted both project’s sustainability and saved money by not sending the soil away and, when the time was right, bringing it all back again. In numbers, we’re saved around 4,300m³, that’s about 500 lorry loads, going off-site only to come back  again later at a price. Pretty clever.

Bit difficult to take an ‘interesting’ photo of a construction site… so here’s a digger at the sport pitches