The Bridgman & Bridgman story

 The Bridgman & Bridgman story started back in the 1970s when horticulturalist Neil Bridgman and his wife relocated to Milton Keynes to work for the Milton Keynes Development Corporation. Neil worked on the tree nursery at Milton Keynes Village and his young son, Chris, would soon join him in his passion for horticulture.

After working together for a few years, the father and son team had amassed a reputation for creating and maintaining beautiful green spaces, and decided to venture out on their own, establishing Bridgman & Bridgman LLP in 2006.

Fast forward ten years and Bridgman & Bridgman are celebrating their 10th Anniversary. Over the past decade the team have worked on a number of prestigious projects across the UK, from landscape construction at the Olympic Park to installing green roofs on Scandinavian modular houses in the Outer Hebrides.

More recently, Bridgman & Bridgman has created a niche in the relatively new area of green roofing: “A lot of the green roofs that have been built up until now have been created by traditional roofing contractors,” said Chris, “But there’s definitely a need for horticultural knowledge in the construction that makes our skills essential for creating beautiful and lasting living roofs.”

Green roofs provide a whole host of benefits which include preventing flooding, increasing biodiversity and improving air quality and preventing overheating in urban areas. By their very nature, they contribute to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

Bridgman & Bridgman decided that they were best placed to produce living roofs with all the features you would expect in a traditional garden. As part of their development, they also partnered with a German green roofing provider: “The Germans are leaders in green roofing; they’ve got so much experience and knowledge that we want to glean. We want to use the very best tried and tested products to make sure that the roofs we build are sustainable, so we follow their recommendations.”

This unique position has enabled Bridgman & Bridgman to establish themselves as one of the UK’s leading company’s for the installation and maintenance of green and living roofs. Bridgman & Bridgman live and breathe green roofing, and have worked on some of the most operationally challenging projects in the UK. Their recent installation of a fully removable green roof in Hull was a UK first, and a challenge that Chris & Neil Bridgman, along with their team, relished.

When asked why the company decided to specialise in green roofing, Chris said: “It’s such a specialist area and people always question and ask what it is that we do and it’s really great to share that knowledge. A real benefit to me is the challenge of the projects; you’re working at height, using cranes, there are a lot more logistical challenges which I find interesting.”

To ensure their operations are in line with the environmental aspirations of green roofing, Bridgman & Bridgman are committed to reducing emissions across the board. The buisness has adoped a fleet of low-emission vehicles, which are crew-style to enable shared use, and have moved from petrol-powered hand tools to battery powered equivalents.These measures have reduced their carbon emissions from over 60 tonnes per year to an incredible 0.75 of a ton without impacting productivity.

By 2020 Bridgman & Bridgman are looking to focus their work entirely on green roofing. In addition, 2017 will see the establishment of a growing nursery in Milton Keynes, making the business the closest Sedum Blanket grower to London which has 10 million square meters of roof that could become ‘green’.