The Garden Community - Tendring and Colchester
A visionary project, redefining what a new community should be for the changing climate we live in, whilst retaining the principles of established, successful and thriving communities.
A partnership project for Colchester, Essex
Latimer by Clarion Housing Group and Mersea Homes are the joint delivery partners of the Tendring and Colchester Borders Garden Community (TCBGC).
The TCBGC project is one of the largest development opportunities within the Clarion Housing Group portfolio and the largest for Mersea Homes.
The garden community will be providing around 7,500 new homes, including much-needed affordable homes, to the east of Colchester in an entirely self-sufficient new community. It will be delivering new schools, a country park, new healthcare and retail, leisure and job opportunities, alongside infrastructure and new facilities to serve new residents as well as benefitting existing communities.
The Garden Community - illustrative masterplan1SlideOfLabel4
Community engagement
Young people are influenced by their neighbourhoods, yet they rarely have a voice in developing them.
We are taking a pioneering approach, giving young people in Tendring district and Colchester a key voice in shaping the design of the Garden Community. We value the fresh perspectives children and young people offer with their keen awareness of the issues affecting their age-group and their compassionate understanding of marginalised groups.
With the support of award-winning social enterprise experts MATT+FIONA, we’ve launched several youth engagement initiatives that have empowered children and young people to have a meaningful say in the design decisions at TCBGC.
The Essex Young Designers
As a youth forum the Essex Young Designers is a group made up of 13 young people, aged 13 to 17, from Tendring district and Colchester. They meet regularly to take part in workshops delivered by MATT+FIONA and our professional design team to inform the brief and design for the garden community.
School design challenge
Workshops for primary and secondary school students for them to design and make small scale models to illustrate their vision for the garden community.
Summer studio and family day
A series of free architecture workshops have been held for local 11 to 14 year-olds. The young people were taught more about the garden community from experts and took part in hands-on design and building activities. The summer studio culminated in a creative family day when over 100 adults and children were able to add their ideas to the model of the garden community.
Learn about our commitment to community engagement
Visit our engagement page to learn more about our youth programme, wider resident consultation and our engagement team.
Land Sky Water
The Essex Young Designers met over a six-week period at Beth Chatto's Plants and Gardens to design and build three structures using repurposed and recycled materials from around the gardens. As part of the wider youth engagement programme for the upcoming garden community, the group created a set of installations that will announce the arrival of the development, centred on its regenerative design principles.
- Land – biodiversity and how plant life can be integrated.
- Sky – exploring the local area’s relationship to light and the night sky.
- Water – it's meaning in one of the UK’s driest counties.
The Meanwhile Garden
Colchester is seeing the benefits of youth engagement activities. As part of the wider involvement with the future garden community, a group of young people have been tasked to design their own furniture for The Meanwhile Garden, a joint venture between Beth Chatto's Plants and Gardens and Darryl Moore Design. The rejuvenated plot of land in the city centre is gifted back to the city as a meanwhile space.
The group made their own designs for furniture that could be installed in the garden during the course of a summer studio in August 2023. The adapted and combined designs were fabricated by local makers Tim Germain and Danny Sharp. They installed the pieces in the garden to show the power of young voices in shaping new places.
Work experience opportunities
We're pleased to raise awareness of, and aspirations about, careers in property with a continuous stream of work experience placements as part of our work at TCBGC - in partnership with Pathways to Property. Work experience placements help people gain an insight into development management and the essential role of design, community engagement, placemaking and town planning in bringing forward successful new communities.
It's a wonderful opportunity for young people to learn about the variety of career paths available and forge early relationships with our colleagues.
Who else is behind the project?
Working alongside Latimer by Clarion Housing Group and Mersea Homes is MATT+FIONA.
This award-winning social enterprise asks young people how their built environment might be improved and empower them to bring that vision to life through their work, BUILD, LEARN, CONNECT.
Our engagement team also includes Community Voluntary Services Tendring, Grounded design team, Clarion Futures and more.
