Jaynic, the company behind the Suffolk Park commercial development on the edge of Bury St Edmunds, has awarded a £175,000 contract for landscaping work on the site.

Aspect Landscape will start work in January on landscaping border areas around the park to include 500 trees, 1.25 miles of hedge, 500 sapling trees and 22,000 root shrubs.

Ipswich-based contractor Jackson Civils is already building a 200metre-long and 30metre-wide landscape bund along the A14 to shield the park from road trunk road.

Zeb Hoffman of landscape designer Indigo Landscape Architects, which is advising Aspect on the work, said: “We are primarily using native plants that provide habitat and foraging for local wildlife.

“This includes 30-metre landscape buffers that will ultimately develop into woodland belts, sheltering the park and creating connectivity routes for wildlife to move around the countryside.”

The park’s eventual occupiers will be responsible for their own landscaping but will be guided by a landscape strategy document to help create a consistent appearance throughout the park.

Jaynic has benefited from an innovative agreement with St Edmundsbury Borough Council which provided a £3m loan facility towards the road infrastructure and landscaping.

John Griffiths, leader of St Edmundsbury council, said: “By providing a higher quality environment, West Suffolk can attract the inward investment and the right mix of businesses to safeguard the growth of our economy both now and into the future.

“We are keen, and are acting, to help deliver a greater level of skills, pay and opportunities for young people as they leave education, in turn enabling greater wealth, prosperity and better living conditions for all of our residents.”

In recognition of the site’s historic links with the World War II Rougham Airfield there will be two information boards installed along the site’s cycleways.

The information boards have been designed in close co-ordination with Rougham Control Tower Aviation Museum to raise awareness of the site’s historic significance. Stainless steel markers will also be installed throughout the park marking where the historic airfield runways crossed today’s roads.