Active travel route environmental enhancements
21/06/23
PUBLIC ART, wildflowers, grasslands and dune planting to enhance and soften a multi-million-pound active travel scheme could be introduced if councillors back the move next week.
A £100,000 commission for public art on the Broughty Ferry stretch of active travel route to Monifieth will be discussed by the city development committee which will also consider £135,000 of work on the scheme to ensure that the conservation objectives are met
Mark Flynn committee convener said: “It is clear that the active travel route serves a genuine, practical purpose but that does not mean that it should be purely functional.
“Public art and native planting, such as these proposals, created specifically and tailored for the location adds to the environment and helps to develop a sense of place.
“It was a condition of receiving the funding for the project that in addition to improvements for active travel, it should also help with placemaking, and a budget for public art and soft landscaping ‘green infrastructure’ was approved by Sustrans as part of its funding grant.”
A panel review of the six submissions received is recommending that a proposed work by Lee Simmons, details of which will be revealed later, be commissioned for Broughty Ferry Esplanade.
The award-winning British artist has already received praise for his tubular stainless-steel humpback whale, which forms the centrepiece of Dundee’s Waterfront Place.
Soft landscaping works will introduce a new native grassland management to the Broughty Ferry shoreline and help to re-establish dune grasses along the beach edge. This will add to the city’s existing nature network of green corridors and “stepping stones” for wildlife.
A bespoke seed mix has been developed for the site containing more than two dozen native wildflowers which will provide a source of nectar for pollinators throughout the growing season. It includes species such as cowslips, vipers’ bugloss and kidney vetch, an important plant for the UK’s smallest butterfly, the Small Blue, which is declining in Scotland.
If the city development committee, which meets on Monday (June 26) approves the tender, work for landscaping by the council’s neighbourhood services department will start later in the summer, with completion before the winter.
Meanwhile if the proposal by Lee Simmons is agreed details will be announced in due course.
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