The new Green Heart outdoor space on the Broadmarsh shopping centre site will open from today (September 4) after months of work.
The once-derelict site has been transformed into an inviting biodiverse garden complete with a pond, trees and a vast selection of flowers and shrubbery.
World-renowned urban designer Thomas Heatherwick was tasked with creating the vision for the future of the Broadmarsh site, which the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust and Townshend Landscape Architects further developed.
Oakfield Construction, a Nottingham-based company involved in the project, has said the Green Heart will achieve a 438 per cent gain in biodiversity for the city.
The space features 34 mature trees, with one being a super English oak, and two of them being Metasequoia trees (giant redwood), which can grow up to 167 feet.
Work began at the start of this year, four years after the shopping centre went into administration as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and was handed back to Nottingham City Council.
After that, the 20-acre site became dilapidated, until work to regenerate it finally began in the last couple of years.
Since the regeneration of the area began, a new central library, car park, bus station and college hub have all been built.
And the city council says its vision for the future of Broadmarsh includes more than 1,000 new homes, and commercial and leisure outlets.
The proposed plans utilise the old frame of the shopping centre to “offer innovative spaces”.
There are also talks of a hotel being built above the City of Caves attraction in hopes of making the area more attractive to tourists.
However, the council’s plans for regeneration have been previously hindered by financial issues.
The project suffered a blow when the council applied for £20 million in funding towards the demolition of the rest of the shopping centre in 2021 but lost out.
The council then lost out on funding a further two times, the last time in November 2023.
