Boscombe Chine Gardens
- Client : Bournemouth Borough Council
- Services : Branding and logo design, exhibition display panels, leaflet design, print and distribution, research and illustrations
- Overview : We do a lot of work for Bournemouth Council on a day to day basis, but the regeneration of Boscombe Gardens was a major project that we were highly involved in and turned out to be a richly rewarding experience. Sue Wooding-Leis who worked as the senior architect, designer and planning consultant on the project said that the money spent with us was the best money she spent on the project, our design work and eye for local detail was key in helping them attain lottery funding, without which the project may have struggled to go ahead. With that phase of the regeneration now complete it's good to see that they have taken our original designs and had cast iron signs put up at all the entrances to the gardens and they look stonking.
Boscombe Gardens was once a beautiful chine leading down to the sea and a spa where Edwardian visitors and locals could enjoy themselves in the fresh seaside air. There are postcards and pictures from this era that show just how stunning it once was. However, as locals amongst us will know, times have changed and the gardens had a different reputation in recent times, especially at night. As part of the Boscombe regeneration plan the gardens were identified as being in need of a serious facelift with many of the trees all reaching an end of life and requiring re-planting and thinning out. Let alone the local squirrel population, which needed reducing drastically, not a popular decision. While we were taking reference photography we were pursued by a living carpet of them which was quite spooky!
We worked with Sue Wooding-Leis, an external consultant brought in by the Council to get the project planned and attain lottery funding for what was a huge undertaking. First up was the requirement to establish a new identity for the gardens so we went back to it’s Edwardian heritage to create the logo and strap-line ‘Conserving the past – creating the future’. It started out as Boscombe Gardens but later under consultation with local historians was updated to Boscombe Chine Gardens. The logo was then used throughout the gardens down to the seafront on bins, information and way-finding signs and cast in iron for a number of larger installations around the gardens.
Another part of our brief was to produce literature and modular exhibition stand for presenting to local people, historians and the lottery committee. Parts of the gardens were to have new installations and upgrades and it was felt that we should produce colourful crayon illustrations of the new features which would have a softer feel to them. Luckily we had the very talented Chris Chapman on hand to produce them.
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