Climate-Resilient Planting Strategies for SEGRO
Helping future-proof landscapes across industrial and logistics estates .
SEGRO is a UK Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) and a leading owner, asset manager and developer of modern warehousing, industrial properties and data centres. The landscapes around its buildings play an important role in supporting biodiversity, enhancing occupier experience and delivering environmental value.
As part of an ongoing partnership, the company commissioned Kew Reach to provide a science-led framework for climate-resilient tree and shrub selection covering four distinct environments / regions of the UK – Midlands, London, North of London, and airports and exposed locations – alongside guidance to inform successful establishment and long-term landscape performance.
The project covered multiple estates, delivering a recommended planting palette tailored to future climate conditions, together with practical guidance designed to support the successful establishment and long-term performance of planting schemes.
The Challenge
The UK has experienced a series of record-breaking weather events in recent years, including extreme heat and prolonged periods of drought, placing unprecedented stress on trees and plants across the country.
For a developer, owner and manager of industrial and logistics property, the implications of a changing climate are commercial as well as environmental. Trees that fail or decline must be replaced, creating recurring costs and reducing the benefits that planting is intended to deliver, including shade and cooling, improved air quality, biodiversity value and amenity.
Selecting species suited to the conditions a location is likely to experience in the future, rather than simply today’s climate, can help support flourishing green spaces for years to come.
Against this backdrop, SEGRO sought a robust, evidence-based approach to climate-resilient planting.
The Approach
Following client consultations and an assessment of the particular constraints associated with working logistics parks, Kew Reach identified a recommended palette of trees and shrubs that could be used across SEGRO’s UK estates.
The recommendations were driven by Kew Reach’s tree selection tool, Palette, which assesses more than 320 species against the projected future climate of a given location. Developed from research pioneered by Kevin Martin, Head of the Arboretum at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and his co-authors, the methodology considers both temperature and moisture availability through measures such as the Climatic Moisture Index, alongside each species’ physiological tolerance of water stress.
The tool operates at site level drawing on 1Km2 climatic models and settlement data to project future conditions. To provide consistency across the portfolio, the sites were grouped into three future-climate clusters, allowing recommendations to be applied efficiently while remaining responsive to regional variations.
Designing for Real-World Conditions
The proposed planting palette was tested against a range of conditions characteristic of SEGRO’s estates including:
Restricted rooting volumes and compacted, hard-surfaced ground
Salt exposure, pollution and reflected heat along transport corridors
Clipped and hedged forms for screening without obscuring CCTV sightlines
Airport safeguarding requirements near Heathrow and Gatwick
For each recommended species, Kew Reach provided information on suitability ratings, drought tolerance and ecosystem-service value, alongside practical characteristics such as height, spread and native status.
The recommendation also incorporated availability within the UK nursery trade, biosecurity watchpoints and guidance on whether species perform best as hedging, shrubs or standard trees. Accompanying reference materials summarised maintenance, soil and aspect requirements for all recommended species.
Beyond Species Selection
Species selection alone is only part of the story. Even well-adapted species require appropriate establishment and aftercare if they are to perform successfully over the long term.
Alongside the planting recommendations, Kew Reach developed detailed guidance covering site and soil assessment, stock selection, planting methodology and maintenance requirements during the critical establishment years.
The guidance also recommended mixing species and provenances within and between sites to strengthen resilience across SEGRO’s estates, helping to reduce future risks associated with climate change, pests and diseases.
The Outcome
The project provided SEGRO with a science-led framework for climate-resilient planting.
By combining future climate projections, operational requirements and practical establishment guidance, the programme supports more informed planting decisions and helps enable landscapes continue to provide environmental, amenity and biodiversity benefits as climate conditions change.
The project demonstrates how climate-informed species selection can help organisations move beyond traditional planting approaches, creating landscapes designed beyond today’s conditions.
Gabriella Zepf, Director, Sustainability, Group Operations, SEGRO:
“I’m incredibly proud of this partnership and what it has enabled us to achieve. Working with Kew Reach has helped us translate world-class science into practical guidance for shaping and managing our landscapes. The collaboration has brought together scientific expertise and practical insight, resulting in guidance that supports more resilient and biodiverse environments and enhances the experience of people and nature.”
Mark Chadwick CEO, Kew Reach:
"This project shows what's possible when scientific research is translated directly into practical decision-making. SEGRO's willingness to plan for the climate their landscapes will face in future, rather than the one they were designed for, reflects real foresight and will help to protect their green assets for years to come”