Landscape Services

Landscape Services Landscape Services maintains a large number of horticultural features across the borough including council-owned grassed areas, shrub borders, hedges and floral displays. In addition, the team also maintains the majority of school grounds, sports pitches, parks, leisure sites, cemeteries and the crematorium.

Our environmental commitment extends beyond the visual environment. Each year, the service composts around 1,000 tonnes of green waste, makes use of 50kgs of hydro prolific polymer crystals (to conserve water), and makes responsible, legal use of non-residual herbicide and mulching techniques to control weed growth.

We aim to achieve the highest standards of horticultural excellence and, in doing so, have won numerous awards. We currently hold three Green Flag awards for the quality of our parks.

Horticultural nursery

We grow all our seasonal bedding plants for the summer and winter floral displays in our Binfield-based nursery. In addition to this we build 600 hanging baskets, 20 flower towers, 30 troughs and maintain a stock of containerised trees and shrubs to replace failures during the winter months.

Grass cutting

Most of the general open space is cut once every 14 days. On average, we cut the grass we own approximately 15 times during the summer months.

Roadside nature reserves

As part of the Bracknell Forest Biodiversity Action Plan a number of verges around the town centre are left uncut to allow rare wildflowers, such as orchids, to flourish and provide food for a variety of insects. These areas are cut once in late summer/autumn to prevent coarse grasses from taking over. If you would like more information please visit our biodiversity page.

Bulb grass

Over the years we have planted thousands of spring flowering bulbs, mostly daffodil, tulip and crocus across the borough. Most of these bulbs are planted in grassed areas as drifts providing a beautiful display of colour during the early spring months.

After the blooms have faded the grass is left uncut to allow the leaves to continue to photosynthesize and then die back naturally returning energy to the bulb in preparation for flowering again the following year. This means that the grass in these areas will get longer than in surrounding areas and will only then be cut and removed in June. This has the added benefit of allowing early-flowering wild flowers to flourish in these same areas boosting the borough's biodiversity.

Border maintenance

Ornamental shrub borders are attended to on a monthly basis during the summer months removing litter and weeds. During the winter period whilst the shrubs are dormant any plants that require pruning are cut back and any exposed soil is dug over.

Hedges

We maintain over 63 thousand metres of hedge within the general open space. Most hedges are cut twice a year. We start the first circuit in late May and the second circuit usually starts in mid September.

Bracknell Forest Homes

Following the transfer of the council’s housing stock, some tasks that were previously undertaken by Landscape Services are now the responsibility of Bracknell Forest Homes. For more information, please visit Bracknell Forest Homes website.