This is a two-part event which will run at the following times:

Thursday 18th April - 9:30am-12:30pm, with a break.

Tuesday 23rd April - 9:30am-12:30pm, with a break.

Wendy Allen is an experienced award-winning UK garden designer. Her show garden ‘The Rain Chain’ won both a Gold medal and the ‘Best Sustainable Garden’ award at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2009, and her designs feature in national press, GLA’s ‘SuDS in Schools’, and the ‘UK Rain Garden Guide’. She has designed and built several innovative community rainscape projects.

In this workshop, Wendy shares her approach to the design and build of small-scale creative, biodiverse SuDS (Sustainable Drainage Systems), focussing on surface water rain gardens (infiltration) and rain planters (filtration).

Wendy explains rainfall and volume calculations, core SuDS principles and shares examples from a range of her projects.

Climate change means heavier rain events and longer periods of drought. By recognising opportunities at each stage of the rainwater pathway, designers and contractors can inform clients about the functions every new or retrofit domestic garden could contribute to benefit our wider water environment.

The workshop will cover:

• An overview of SuDS regulations and planning requirements across the UK with links to help garden designers locate relevant SuDS resources.
• How rivers are affected by impermeable surfaces - and what garden designers can do about it.
• Calculating rainfall, runoff and storage volume to give confidence in your own creative rainwater designs.
• Top tips to create small-scale water butts, rain planters and rain gardens.
• Ways to consider habitat and biodiverse planting with rain planters and rain gardens.

A resources list for further reference.

This session is interactive for delegates to complete calculations and ask questions. This event will be recorded and a resources/references handout will be made available to delegates after the event. Once you have booked onto the event an invitation to the Zoom meeting will be sent 24 hours before the meeting commences with instructions on how to log on.

This workshop is suitable for all levels of garden designers, landscape designers, landscape architects.

You will need:

• A computer or laptop to log on to Zoom
• Your preferred form of note taking
• A calculator, while not a requirement, may be useful for worksheets.