A forest that had time to grow
Forty-two acres of indigenous coastal forest, and why the estate was built around it rather than through it.
Most estates clear a site and plant it back. Dunkirk did the opposite. Forty-two acres of indigenous coastal forest were treated as the thing being built around, not the thing being built through, and two decades on that decision is the first thing you notice.
It shows up in small ways. Shade over the roads on a February afternoon. Birdsong in the mornings loud enough to wake you, if you leave a window open. Gardens that look settled rather than newly planted, because the canopy above them was already decades old when the first homes went in.
Built around, not through
Building around mature trees is slower and more expensive than clearing. Roads bend where a straight line would have been cheaper. Some stands were left exactly where they were. The payoff is an estate that reads as part of the landscape instead of an interruption in it.
The forest is not scenery to be looked at from a distance, either. Timber boardwalks run through it, and the trails connect to two dams kept for catch-and-release fishing. Walk them often enough and the estate stops feeling like a development with trees on it and starts feeling like a piece of forest that happens to have homes in it.
