Westminster City Council

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Overview
Continental Landscapes have been working with the City of Westminster since 2000. We successfully retained the grounds maintenance and cemetery management contract in 2007 and 2017.
We also provide the grounds maintenance service for Westminster Housing.

The services we provide include:
  • Parks and open spaces grounds maintenance
  • Highway sites maintenance
  • Traffic island sites maintenance
  • Housing estate planting and maintenance
  • Playgrounds inspection, repairs and maintenance
  • Facilities repairs and improvements
  • Construction and soft landscaping of new features
  • Project management
  • Seasonal bedding design and supply
  • Cemetery management and maintenance
We manage the Green Flag Awards and London/Britain in Bloom entry applications for our client, entering on their behalf and ensuring all sites are maintained to the highest standards. We have had multiple successes over the years at both awards.
Presently we hold 25 Green Flag Awards and 3 Heritage Site Accreditations. We have a further 3 Green Flags Awards on the Housing contract.
In 2019, we won gold and were category winner in Britain in Bloom.
Westminster Parks

We look after all of Westminster’s parks and gardens, open spaces, social service sites and highways sites. The character of the parks varies greatly, from the busy West End parks, such as Soho Square Gardens, Leicester Square and Victoria Embankment Gardens, to the more residential parks, such as St. John’s Wood Church Grounds Garden, Paddington Street Gardens and Porchester Square Gardens.

We also maintain Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner, at either end of the busy Park Lane.

We are responsible for the provision of the grounds maintenance of the parks and in a number of sites we provide a permanent staff presence.

The busy South section experiences a huge daily influx of tourists, business people, politicians and local residents. On an average day Leicester Square has a ½ million footfall passing through. Working in Westminster has many challenges, demonstrations, protest marches, film premiers and events such as Pride in London, London marathon and New Year’s Eve Fireworks. Summer concerts are held daily in the Victoria Embankment Gardens and many of the other parks host events, particularly during the summer months.

The north section of the contract is more tranquil. The nature of the parks and gardens tend to be centred on the local community. Many of the parks have playgrounds, and Continental Landscapes do all the repairs and maintenance as well as the quarterly and annual ROSPA inspections.

Westminster Housing Estate Maintenance

Continental Landscapes maintain all of Westminster’s Housing estates. A dedicated team of gardeners maintain the housing estates to a very high standard to ensure they are pleasant and safe places for the residents to spend time.

Three of the estates hold the Green Flag Award.

We have worked hard with Westminster to develop these sites, including installing habitat features such as wildflower meadows, bug hotels and loggeries.

Certain pocket parks have been transformed into scent gardens, wildlife parks and allotment areas.

Westminster Cemetery Maintenance

Continental Landscapes Ltd manage and maintain the City of Westminster’s cemetery service. The three cemeteries are all outside of the borough, with two traditional Victorian cemeteries in Hanwell and East Finchley, and a post-war lawn-style cemetery in Mill Hill.

In addition to maintaining the grounds, Continental Landscapes also run the bereavement service from the Hanwell office, arranging funerals and maintaining the cemetery records.

All 3 cemeteries hold the Green Flag Award and have had repeated successes at London in Bloom over the past few years, with both East Finchley and Mill Hill winning gold in the Large Cemetery category.

In Hanwell and East Finchley Cemeteries, a number of burial chambers were installed to increase the interment capacity.

 

Westminster Seasonal Bedding

Continental Landscapes are responsible for the design, supply, planting and maintenance of the seasonal bedding displays in Westminster. Twice yearly we plant over 250,000 bedding plants, with a further 100,000 spring flowering bulbs in the autumn.

The bedding displays contain numerous feature and dot plants, which provide a riot of colour when in full bloom.

The exotic planting scheme in the Victoria Embankment Gardens features mature tropical and sub-tropical plants from around the world during the summer and draws visitors into the gardens who come to admire the stunning planting display.

Westminster attracts over a million visitors a day and the seasonal bedding displays add enhance the visitor’s enjoyment of the gardens.

At the end of the season, all the bedding plants are composted and the compost produced is used to enrich the soil for future bedding displays.

Westminster Project work
Project Work
We have managed a number of projects in Westminster and have a dedicated projects manager on the team. Past projects include new playground installation, outdoor gyms, turfing and landscaping.
We also offer playground improvement works and an infrastructure maintenance and repair service.
Our most recent project is the soft landscaping of Christchurch Gardens. The gardens underwent a complete redesign with new hard & soft landscaping. We were responsible for the planting and turfing, plus installation of an irrigation system.

Green Flag Awards

Presently Westminster have 25 Green Flags and 3 Green Heritage Site Accreditations . The Housing contract hold a further 3 Green Flags.
Continental Landscapes submit all the Green Flag Award entries on behalf of Westminster. This includes writing the management plan and submitting new entries.
As part of our commitment to Westminster City Council, we maintain all our parks to the Green Flag standard, irrespective of whether or not they have been entered for a Green Flag Award.
The Green Flag Award Scheme is run by Keep Britain Tidy and is the benchmark against which the quality of public parks and green spaces can be measured. It also recognises the diversity and value of green space to the local community. The park, garden or green space is judged against 8 criteria which cover everything from access through to sustainability and marketing. Listed below are the eight assessment criteria:

  1. A welcoming place – how to create a sense that people are positively welcomed in the park
  2. Healthy, safe & secure – how best to ensure that the park is a safe & healthy environment for all users
  3. Clean & well maintained – what people can expect in terms of cleanliness, facilities & maintenance
  4. Sustainability – how a park can be managed in environmentally sensitive ways
  5. Conservation & heritage – the value of conservation & care of historical heritage
  6. Community involvement – ways of encouraging community participation and acknowledging the community’s role in a park’s success
  7. Marketing – methods of promoting a park successfully
  8. Management – how to reflect all of the above in a coherent & accessible management plan or strategy and ensure it is implemented.

Social Value

Continental Landscapes mange the social value and volunteering within the parks and gardens on behalf of Westminster Council. We have a dedicated manager on the team who oversees the volunteer sector.
We place special emphasis on working with local residents who may have learning difficulties, be social excluded, have a long term medical condition or long term unemployed. Recently we employed 6 staff on short term contracts who were previously homeless and unemployed.
The St John’s Wood Local Nature Reserve is one of our ongoing projects where we are redeveloping the area to encourage wildlife and serve as an outdoor classroom. All the work undertaken and the ongoing maintenance is done by various volunteer groups.
Our volunteer activities cover a broad spectrum of tasks, from litter picking, leaf clearance, assembling bird boxes, maintaining wildlife meadows and rose pruning.
Westminster Service Coverage
We maintain 109 sites across the City from Queen’s Park Gardens and St. John’s Wood Church Grounds in the north, to Victoria Embankment Gardens and Soho Square in the south.
Some of the parks have an extremely high profile, such as Leicester Square, Soho Square, Hyde Park Corner, Marble Arch, Whitehall Gardens and Victoria Embankment Gardens.
Many of the Central London parks experience a high volume of users throughout the day by office workers, residents and tourists.
Working in Westminster can be challenging with the high level of congestion on the roads and the large number of people using the parks. Work has to be meticulously programmed and carried out to a very high standard.
We are responsible for the grounds maintenance and management of Westminster’s 3 cemeteries which are situated outside of Westminster; Hanwell, East Finchley and Mill Hill Cemetery.
The Housing contract is made up of the North, South and Western sections. We are responsible for all the grounds maintenance, seasonal bedding and hard surfaces.

Who We
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