The new luxury £4 million touring and glamping resort Love2Stay, near Shrewsbury, opened to guests this summer, features a natural, chemical-free, swimming pool at the heart of the development. The resort, situated on the edge of the market town of Shrewsbury in 22 acres of beautifully landscaped grounds, offers visitors a luxurious natural retreat, with accommodation in either glamping Safari style lodges or 120 touring caravan pitches. The 432 m2 natural swimming pool at the centre of the resort has been designed and built by Poolscape Ltd in collaboration with multiple RHS Gold Medal winning landscape design practice, MOSAIC. The team used the very latest pool technology from Austrian natural pool specialists BIOTOP, whose founder and chairman Peter Petrich flew in to see the finished pool and perform the official opening for swimmers. The bespoke pool design provides swimmers with crystal clear, chemical free water, which is naturally filtered by BIOTOP’s market leading skimmer and filtration technology.
Creating a public space natural swimming pool requires considerable expertise to ensure the clarity of the water for a larger number of swimmers. BIOTOP was the company that invented the first commercial natural swimming pools in Austria more than 30 years ago. The company is the world’s market leader, having built more than 5,000 private and public natural swimming pools around the globe, including the UK’s first public one in 2015, at the King’s Cross Development in London. The natural pool design incorporates a stunning 230 m2 planted regeneration zone filled with more than 250 mature water lilies and a naturalistic marginal zone, which has been planted with more than 400 native reeds and rushes to create the appearance of a natural lake at the centre of the resort. The pool is flanked on three sides by spacious cedar decking edged and surrounded by soft, textural herbaceous borders. Poolscape is a UK partner of BIOTOP and its team worked with Mr Petrich to design a completely new, concealed deep water chamber which enables the swimming area to remain at a safe 1.4 metres deep.
