Description

The new civic gardens surrounded by offices, shops, cafés and bars provide a new setting for the Grade 1 Listed Town Hall, and also for the new Millennium Galleries and the Winter Gardens. Replacing a paved and grassed area with benches and bedding displays designed in 1937 and previously overshadowed by the now demolished Town Hall extension, the space in the historic city centre has been redesigned to create gardens, with strong references to Sheffield's traditions of high quality craftsmanship, particularly in metalwork and stonework.

Surrounded by 4 and 5 storey buildings beyond the busy city centre roads, the gardens have a strong sense of enclosure, due in part to their sunken level. Adjacent bus stop areas have been re-designed and re-paved, mitigating the visual impact of the roads and linking the open space to the neighbouring streets.

Within the gardens wide natural stone paths, lined by decorative water rills with ceramic inlays, lead from the edges to the focal point of the computer controlled fountain display with the new Winter Gardens beyond. Seats set into the retaining walls of the raised planting beds face wide paths and overlook the fountain and lawns. Hard landscape materials are in character with the Sheffield setting and include Stoke Hall gritstone to match the Town Hall, Rockingham slab paving and granite setts.

The planting, inspired largely by traditional English gardening styles, with a few contemporary influences, has a structure of shrubs under-planted with herbaceous perennials and bulbs forming a botanically rich mixture with interest all through the year. Bold foliage and strong architectural form are used to complement the robust stone masonry.