In 2011 DSA beat competition from internationally renowned practices to develop the world’ first ‘sustainable plant masterplan’ for Toyota at their car manufacturing plant at Burnaston in Derbyshire.

Working with Dr James Hitchmough and colleagues at Sheffield University, together with the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, we produced the ‘vision’ to secure funding and deliver an ongoing landscape transformation of the 235-hectare site. The early phases of this decades-long project have now been completed, showing a measurable increase in biodiversity value, as well as tangible reductions in landscape management cost and pollutants, including herbicides and pesticides as well as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.