It was a privilege for GreenBlue Urban to work with the prestigious Marriott Group to deliver a quality landscape around the Residence Inn in the bustling heart of downtown Greenville.

We often associate hotels in downtown areas with a lack of provision for lush landscaping and green infrastructure elements, not to mention the noise and activity of a 24 hour urban lifestyle. This can be counter to our need of sleep and rest in the centre of these hives of activity. However, working with the designers and installers delivering the Residence Inn by Marriott, GreenBlue Urban were able to provide the advice and technical solutions necessary to ensure that the landscape was not an afterthought.

The RootSpace soil cell system was used under the sidewalk to provide adequate uncompacted soil volume, ensuring the trees would establish into maturity to create the right canopy cover to buffer noise, add amenity value and reduce the urban heat island effect, making comfort of the guest rooms the primary focus for this city center hotel. The innovative rooms, in addition to the gym, pool, and dining provisions, meant that the hotel has been designed to draw not only the traveler on a budget visit, but catering to those for whom a holistic hotel experience is a requirement. The attractiveness of the peripheral pubic realm including the trees is also an essential component of placemaking to draw in local residents to use the hotel facilities more regularly.

The City of Greenville have worked with the GreenBlue Urban team and were enthusiastic to increase the provision of systems in the city that would ensure the healthy growth necessary for the trees to reach their full species potential. They also have a city tree crediting program and a landscape ordinance checklist that ensure quality of landscape is at the heart of new development delivered across the city. It was with this in mind that Seamon Whiteside specified the GBU RootSpace system. 24″ high RootSpace 600 modules created the perfect environment for theses urban trees and whats more, were able to deliver a cost-effective scheme for twelve trees with groups of two trees sharing the linked volume of our unique ArborSystem.

This project was time critical and GreenBlue Urban were able to respond to the needs of the contractors, ensuring that site delivery was achieved on time. The flexibility and ease of assembly of the RootSpace system enabled installers to construct the tree pit systems quickly, easily, and without onsite supervision on this occasion – although onsite support is a service GreenBlue Urban provide free-of-charge.