September 11 2024

Argyle Street has become the latest road to benefit from Glasgow's Avenues programme following the completion of a rain garden outside the headquarters of banking giant JP Morgan Chase.

Developed by public realm and transport design practice Urban Movement the green strip will absorb runoff from hard surfaces, relieving pressure on the city's combined sewer system during heavy downpours.

It is estimated that around 75% of this water will be used by the mix of grasses, herbaceous plants and specimen shrubs planted alongside a segregated cycle track, below which excess water is channelled to avoid flooding a railway line below. Public realm improvements extend to a bus shelter and seating, complementing a widened footway paved in Italian Porphyry.

Ian Hingley of Urban Movement commented: “The Urban Movement and Civic Engineers designed streetscape creates a fitting forecourt for JP Morgan Chase’s new flagship head office on Glasgow’s Argyle Street, with innovative shallow soil planted rain gardens, water inlet bridges under the cycle lane, and new street furniture offering a taster for the rest of the Argyle Street Avenues project, which has just broken ground at Anderston Cross.”

The rain gardens are the first phase of a broader public realm package extending from Anderston Cross to Glasgow Cross, establishing a mile of contiguous streetscape.

11 Comments

#1 Posted by Plant Lover on 11 Sep 2024 at 15:08 PM

Who will be maintaining these? GCC? Has anyone checked if they have still a skill to differentiate grass from herbaceous plants, or tree from shrub?
Let's see how they will look next year after GCC takes over and forgets to maintain planting properly.

#2 Posted by Alan Titchmarsh on 11 Sep 2024 at 16:04 PM

Just looks like a bunch of unkempt weeds to me

#3 Posted by George on 11 Sep 2024 at 17:34 PM

Preserve us if it is GCC maintaining this, most areas of grass near us are rarely cut these days, let alone weeding flower beds. Apparently all to help Net Zero, but forget the fact that the Glasgow population who they are supposed to serve actually would like the place looking neat and tidy please.

#4 Posted by David on 12 Sep 2024 at 12:48 PM

I can't see any litter bins in any of the pictures - can you guess what will happen to these rain gardens along with the maintenance neglect?

#5 Posted by Mary Hill on 12 Sep 2024 at 20:23 PM

This is exactly the kind of project we should all be getting behind. Finally we have a great example of a rain garden of significant scale within the centre of one of our cities here in Scotland. So important that this has been delivered, and hopefully many more will follow. Congratulations to all involved.

#6 Posted by Lovely on 13 Sep 2024 at 10:21 AM

A laughable waste of money and resources for an ugly and pointless outcome plus the ubiquitous 'pedestrian hitter' cycle lane snaking around the bus stop. A few trees would have been much better.

#7 Posted by James Hepburn on 16 Sep 2024 at 15:10 PM

At best it will become a trap for the piles of rubbish Glasgow City Council constantly fails to clean up.

#8 Posted by Talk design on 16 Sep 2024 at 15:29 PM

Ok let us talk about the design.
In picture three between the building, we have columns supporting the building, bollards protecting them from accidental damage, bike racks, flat rain garden and a bus stop.
The potion of the avenues clutter has squeezed the urban realm to a width where only three people can walk beside one another. Such that if two where coming is opposite direction there would be an issue. This would be worse if we had someone with a wheelchair or a pram.
Surely the bike racks and the building protection strategy could have been integrated to create one line of vertical pedestrian obstructions.
In picture one The flat uninventive rain garden will by a trip hazard and the paving gives little to anyone visually impaired.
The bus stop has created a kink in the cycle path, which in principle could be a calming measure but may also represent a location where accident between cyclists could happen. Further is you are traveling in from the west, on the LHS of the cycle lane, the position of the advertising will stop any pedestrian could cause crash between the pedestrian and the cyclist as they cannot be seen.
Overall, a poor design…. And a waste of public funds.

#9 Posted by Lovely on 17 Sep 2024 at 11:55 AM

Good analysis above. Hadn’t actually realised the cycle lane was supposed to be two way, which is pure madness, better to take your chances among the cars than risk seriously injuring a pedestrian or another cyclist on the crazy bus stop chicane.

#10 Posted by justmesaying on 17 Sep 2024 at 16:55 PM

There will be a cycle lane on both sides of the road, however in early designs i saw they were expecting cyclists on the north side traveling east to dismount if they wanted to turn onto right Robertson St.

#11 Posted by Pragmatist on 20 Sep 2024 at 14:52 PM

I like this, but genuine question for road engineers or horticulturalists - will these plants be robust enough to stand the winter salting (gritting) of the roads/pavements? Will repeated salting not just weaken the plants and/or lead to there being no soil nutrients thus stunting growth?

Post your comments