Oak Park Native Tree Planting

Oak Park Native Tree Planting

Oak Park Native Tree Planting

 As part of our Oak Park development we constructed a new 2.9 hectare public park. The Park was a multi-year project, which was complete in 2020. The concept for the park is a semi-natural landscape that requires limited horticultural maintenance while sustaining biodiversity. The park incorporates a greenway for pedestrians and cyclists and links into a chain of existing green spaces along the Broadfield stream linking into Naas town centre. The Park has been planted with native woodland planting consisting of exclusively native tree and shrubs species: Oak, Pine, Hazel, Willow, Hawthorn, Sloe, Viburnum, Cherry and Holly. This was an opportunity to create a wildlife corridor between the town centre and rural hinterland. The woodland will support a wide diversity of invertebrates species, birds and mammalian fauna including foraging bats, badgers, field mice, rabbits and foxes. There are occasional breaks in the woodland to provide views into the park from the housing which have been sown with a wildflower mix, creating woodland clearings and providing food for pollinating insects. In total 3,300 native trees and shrubs have been planted in the park. As it matures, the woodland will be dominated by Oaks and will mimic the Oak woodlands that once covered the plains of Kildare before the arrival of the first farmers thousands of years ago. The riverbanks of the Broadfield stream have been protected as have low-lying flood prone areas, which have been developed as a wet grassland. A new hedgerow has been planted along the western boundary of the site and grassland areas will be managed as meadows for biodiversity benefit.

Return to News