It is one of London’s finest parks, but that doesn’t happen by chance. We found out just what goes into making Greenwich Park the place to be.
‘Greenwich Park Revealed’ is the subject of the Royal Park’s first ‘Winter Warmer’ event of 2024. Fourteen years in development, it is a £12 million project to restore and protect the park’s historic landscape as imagined in the ‘Grand Plan’, a landscape designed in the 17th century by Andre le Notre, commissioned by King Charles II following his return from exile.
In 1997, UNESCO recognised le Notre’s ‘Grand Plan’ as ‘a masterpiece of the application of symmetrical landscape design to irregular terrain’. The ‘Greenwich Maritime UNESCO World Heritage Site’ includes Greenwich Park, the Royal Observatory, the Queen’s House, the Royal Naval College (and museums) and the town centre buildings (on the approach to the formal ensemble). Its having deteriorating over time, Greenwich Park Revealed will reinstate this ‘symmetrical landscape design’.
The ‘Winter Warmer’ details how – among other things – the project has encompassed archaeology, redressed the absence of notable locals in the historical narrative, and created more spaces for community engagement with a new café and learning centre. To find out more about the restoration of the tree avenues central to this landscape, ‘A Walk in the Woods’, one of an occasional series of features, is made with park manager, Clare Lanes.
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Greenwich Park, perhaps today most famously host to the Meridian Line, where east meets west at Longitude 0°, is a 73-hectare rectangular green space in south-east London, sandwiched between the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets (Isle of Dogs), Lewisham and the Royal Borough of Greenwich. The park is one of eight managed by the Royal Parks, an independent charity formed in 2017 to manage royal green spaces for the government.
The Royal Parks office is near Blackheath Gate (south). Joggers, dog walkers, a parent with a double baby buggy, all enjoy the wide pavements on Blackheath Avenue. A school group walks north towards the astronomical heart of the Park, the Royal Observatory complex and the statue of General Wolfe, 154 feet above sea level on the crest of a slope that, following the restoration, will descend a series of grassed steps towards the River Thames.
Above Flamsteed House (named after the first Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed, commissioned by King Charles II to create a map of the night sky accurate enough to be used for navigation), the red Time Ball has just dropped. Since 1833, it has signalled to ships navigating the River Thames that the time is one o’clock. Below it, in a gated courtyard, paid entry visitors walk the line between east and west.
Ten metres east of the Meridian Line, the public space surrounding the General Wolfe Statue is fenced off for transformation under Greenwich Park Revealed.
Visitors wanting the 180-degree view of London’s skyline squeeze through a pedestrian security gate onto a narrow path below the observatory courtyard to capture their panoramic videos for posterity.
Behind the fencing, ‘Grand Ascent’ earthworks, re-grading and regrassing the banks, are well underway. The new viewing platform surrounding the Wolfe statue is being landscaped with native flowering limes (Tilia tomentosa ‘Brabant’, a favourite of honey bees, drought-tolerant and less susceptible to disease), and Zelkova serrata ‘Green Vase’ will be planted at the Blackheath end of the tree avenue. Some of the semi-mature trees (with Gator bags attached) have already been positioned within tree pits five-foot square and lined with gravel and sustainable urban drainage systems. Many more await planting out.
It takes ten minutes to return to the Royal Parks office, where Clare suggests we head across Blackheath Avenue, with its double rows of bare horse chestnut trees planted in the 1940s, towards the flower garden. “The horse chestnuts suffer a few different diseases. As the Avenue dies off, we will replant a mix of lime and drought-resilient Zelkova that does well in other royal parks. It’s a healthier way forward for trees growing on gravelly, free-draining soil.”
A twisted sweet chestnut veteran, one of 50 left from the 1,000 planted under the ‘Grand Plan’, is hugely popular with a flock of tame pigeons. “[At] approximately 350 years old, it’s a characterful tree. The bit that still lives overhangs the pathway, so we allow it to grow. You’ll notice hardwood chip around the base. In 2015, Ian Rogers, the royal parks’ head of arboriculture, implemented processes to elongate the lives of our veterans, aerating and decompacting the soil, followed by a mulch of hardwood chip around the base to feed the tree and retain moisture in the soil.”
A mulching programme started again in 2023 and will continue in 2024 with conservation volunteers.
The (dog-free) flower garden is hugely popular with summer visitors. Clare considers it to be the park’s arboretum and our ‘Woodland Walk’ offers (in no particular order) birch, Ginkgo biloba, young flowering magnolia, tulip trees, a small handkerchief tree “that flowers with bright-white bracts of handkerchiefs in May”, a (North American shagbark) hickory, a mulberry “just beginning to walk” (layer), pines, cedars of Lebanon, blue cedars and more.
“Cedars are Victorian plantings and are susceptible to limb drop, so we are careful. We close this area, the Rose Garden (diseased beech) and the play area (large Massaria-free London planes), when winds gust over 40 mph.
“When the Queen’s Orchard was handed over to the Royal Parks 15 years ago, it came with what we believe to be a 200-year-old mulberry, the only tree in the park with a TPO to ensure it would be protected.”
In the south-east corner, the park’s popular wilderness (deer park) is slightly smaller now that it contains a new learning centre. A herd of fallow deer will return in 2025.
Greenwich Park welcomes five million visitors a year, with mostly local communities using the two entrance gates along the eastern boundary. “Park visits always feel slightly divided. If you are at the Wolfe statue, you are a tourist.
Moving to the outside, you have regular dog walkers and exercisers, people who live near or use it as their pedestrian commuter route.”
Some of the restoration is about dispersing people throughout the wider park. “At Vanbrugh Gate, we have opened a new café that people can head for while still serving the community. The project is also about community engagement within the different boroughs around us. People care about what we do here and we work with them on that basis.” Behind the new café (building conversion), part of an old contractor machinery yard has been transformed into a new community garden.
Towards Maze Hill Gate, roped-off squares contain scrub planting (gorse, hawthorn and hazel) for habitat and biodiversity.
Greenwich Park has over 3,000 trees. Day-to-day tree maintenance, like clearing fallen branches, is undertaken by landscaping contractor ‘idverde’, who keep a team (including two chainsaw operators) in the park. The Royal Parks arboriculture team inspect the trees regularly and arrange for climbing and complex arb works.
West of Maze Hill Gate, a young oak bears a bud swollen by a gall wasp. “These are part of the healthy cycle of an oak tree providing habitat for invertebrates.”
The path to One Tree Hill begins at a 350-year-old sweet chestnut veteran, placed third in the Woodland Trust’s ‘Tree of the Year’ (2023), its base surrounded with a mulch of hawthorn chip. “Along with most of London we have oak processionary moth, but I think we are seeing a reduction in its impact. This year’s restoration of avenues near the parterre banks came with some tree removal, Turkey oak predominantly.”
Towards the top of the incline, orange plastic fencing surrounds a Greenwich Park Revealed archaeological dig site that explored an old air raid shelter, uncovering treasures of tin soldiers, coins and WWII graffiti.
When planning any project or works the visuals are considered. This could be maintaining the ‘Protected View’ from the General Wolfe Statue to St Paul’s Cathedral, removing self-set robinia and sycamore to preserve the ‘windows’ (views from the pathways), or removing obstructions that block views into the park from UNESCO partner buildings.
One Tree Hill supports a London plane encircled by wooden seating from which to admire a cityscape much changed from the smoggy flatlands in Joshua Reynolds’ 1809 painting of ‘London from Greenwich Park’ (Tate), when Greenwich was considered a place to breathe fresh air on the city’s outskirts. “We are talking of reduction of trees below One Tree Hill where we are beginning to lose the view of the Queen’s House.”
Heading downhill, the hornbeam lining both sides of Lovers’ Walk bear the ravages of squirrel damage and subsequent infection. Arriving at the east side of Queen’s Field, a flat expanse of grass linking the Queen’s House (north) to the Grand Ascent (south), works for Greenwich Park Revealed come wholly into focus.
Avenues of trees flank both sides of the field. In the eastern avenues, mature hornbeams are supplemented with new ‘heavy standards’, plantings 10–15 years old. “We pre-ordered Dutch elm disease-resistant ‘New Horizon’ (Japanese x Siberian hybrid, unattractive to squirrels) from Barcham’s quite a while ago.”
During normal summer conditions (May to September), they will be watered three times a week for their first eight years of establishment.
In the western avenues, plantings of ‘New Horizon’ are supplemented with native lime (Tilia cordata or small-leaved lime) between retained mature beech and hornbeam. They should last longer than the diseased or declining P1970s Turkey oaks (planted to replace DED-infected elm) earmarked for removal later this year.
Clare explains: “Over time, different park managers have come in and made decisions that seemed appropriate at the time.” As horticultural research and environmental knowledge evolves, those decisions may no longer be suitable for the long-term existence of the avenues. “Mixing species ensures resilience should disease come along. So far there have been no issues. The Gator bags have worked well for watering and there have been no attempts at vandalism.” That said, the park gates are locked overnight and the museum grounds are security patrolled, and the project’s community engagement will have gone some way in helping to alleviate temptation.
These tree avenues frame the view to the ‘Grand Ascent’, a promontory in a slope that folds and wrinkles to the east and west. The western steps are being grassed, while the eastern side is a mound of earth awaiting repatriation with the downslope. The original Scots pines framing each grassy level were removed a hundred years ago. “Hawthorn, a native and common tree across the park 100–200 year ago, was chosen as a better tree to go back in that location. Both sides will be finished with a hedgerow. Access to the terraces (via a gate on the second terrace down) will be managed, but for 2024 they will be closed,” to allow works to settle. Below the ‘Grand Ascent’, Heras fencing marks where more earthworks will re-sculpt a squared-off rectangle to form parterre banks as per the C17th baroque design.
In all, 80 new trees have been planted in these avenues. Head gardener Tom Brown, horticultural colleagues and ‘idverde’ contractors all help the Greenwich Park Revealed ‘Build’ and ‘Landscape’ teams with planting. “Including hedgerows and trees planted across the wider park, we will have planted 140 new trees this year. Definitely a net gain!”
Circumnavigating the wildwood scrub bank below Flamsteed House, maturing self-sown trees are due a maintenance coppice and the bramble reduced to create a mosaic of habitats. “Safe havens are important in an urban park. Foxes like it, as do nesting birds. Speckled wood and other butterfly species enjoy the brambles.”
Greenwich Park has more hills than is first evident. Following a Parks Works vehicle transporting maintenance prunings up a grassy bank, we reach the top of Croom’s Hill and the early medieval barrows (scheduled ancient monument).
“Four or five years ago, we changed mowing regimes. Rather than do a regular amenity cut, areas are now cut once or twice a year. Up here, we are on less vigorous low-growing acid grassland.” The path removed (under Greenwich Park Revealed) last year is slowly regrassing itself around the mounds.
Given that prior to the 17th-century design, the entire site was once a Royal deer park, Clare thinks it was probably a large wood pasture, mature trees dotted throughout grassland maintaining habitat corridors. “Ecologically, the park is connected enough, with tree avenues and copses and un-mown areas of grass.
How the corridors beyond our boundaries connect up is what is more important.
To the south we have Blackheath: not many trees, but acid grassland habitat. To the north, the Royal Museums are looking at new landscaping to connect with ours. We were talking with them about using elm and lime and if they are resowing grassland areas, whether they might use acid grassland species, so that fauna using it has movement corridors, creating that cross-landscape connectivity.”
On the western boundary wall (the entire wall is Grade II listed), the Rose Garden (P 1995) has reached the end of its life. A three-year project (outside Greenwich Park Revealed) begins this winter to transform the site, planting new beds and replacements for a Phytophthora-infected beech and (possibly) infected yew hedges.
Throughout the park, an amount of deadwood trunks lie in situ, including the historic Queen Elizabeth Oak (P 12th century). Many more have been moved to the park’s south-western corner near the Dell, a hollow that was once an old quarry.
Head gardener Tom and two ‘idverde’ contractors are cutting and removing dead cherry trees and rhododendrons believed to have succumbed to Phytophthora.
“The logs will be embedded in the sides to create a loggery and stumpery (beetle habitat) and replanted with tree ferns, native ferns and shade-loving plants and a pathway running through. These areas are really important in a park. Creating a feature that engages people is a good thing to do. By starting slowly we can make sure we get it right.”
Funded (mostly) by National Lottery ‘Heritage’ and ‘Community’ funds, Greenwich Park Revealed is on schedule and within budget.
“I have managed urban spaces throughout my career,” Clare, who joined the park in April 2023, said. “This is a lovely park with great history, horticulture and biodiversity. It is well resourced, with teams and machinery and a budget to maintain the landscape in good condition for future generations. All this is really important for a park manager.”
www.royalparks.org.uk/visit/parks/greenwich-park/greenwich-park-revealed
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