Kannur International Airport
A greenfield airport landscape delivered from bare ground — soil profiling and amendment, terminal and forecourt planting, and an airside planting regime written around wildlife hazard management from the first drawing rather than retrofitted after opening.
- Client
- Kannur International Airport Limited
- Location
- Kannur, Kerala, India
- Period
- Greenfield delivery
- Sector
- Aviation
- Site condition
- Greenfield — laterite soils requiring amendment
- Design driver
- Wildlife hazard management written into the species list
- Delivery model
- Supply plus establishment maintenance
Scope
- Soil investigation, profiling and amendment across the landscape footprint
- Terminal forecourt, kerbside and internal landscape
- Airside grass and shrub regime designed for wildlife hazard control
- Nursery programme and phased plant supply
- Establishment maintenance through the defects period
Getting the soil right before anything is planted
On a greenfield airport the landscape budget is usually spent twice: once on plants, and then again on replacing the plants that die because nobody paid for the soil. Laterite profiles are hostile to most ornamental stock — low organic matter, poor structure, aggressive drainage in the wet season and concrete-like in the dry.
We treat soil as the primary material. Profiling, organic amendment, and a growing-medium specification with stated electrical conductivity and pH bands come before the plant schedule, not after it. That sequencing is the difference between a landscape that establishes and one that is replanted every second year.
Planting a terminal before there is a terminal
The photographs from this project show the building still under construction on bare ground. That is the right time to start: soil preparation, nursery programming and the growing-on of stock all run for months before anything can be planted, and a landscape contractor who arrives at handover has already lost a season.
On site
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