Flower Garden Lake
We’re restoring the Flower Garden Lake in Greenwich Park to support wonderful wildlife. We’ll improve sustainability, improve the water quality, and enhance the habitat with aquatic planting and landscaping.
What we'll be doing
We’re going to drain and clean the lake and connect a borehole supply to provide a sustainable water source so that there is no longer a reliance on a mains water supply.
We’ll create new bog areas and introduce marginal planting edges around the lake, to be planted with marginal and aquatic plants including yellow flag iris (iris pseudacorus), brooklime (veronica beccabunga) and arrowhead (sagittaria sagittifolia). We’ll also be dividing some of the waterlilies currently growing in the Queen’s Orchard pond and bring those to the Flower Garden Lake.
These works will support a rich diversity of wildlife, providing a better home for frogs, toads, newts, dragonflies and damselflies as well as a host of other species.
When will work take place?
Works were scheduled to begin in November 2022. However, due to the freezing cold weather and ice they were postponed to January 2023. We worked with Environment Agency-certified experts to remove and permanently rehouse the fish in the lake to allow the conservation works to take place. We also re-homed a number of non-native, red-eared terrapins, introduced as unwanted pets, because these cause harm to native species. In the short term, ducks, moorhens and other birds flew away but they returned when the lake was refilled.
Vegetation clearance was also carried out around the lake to help deliver the work and as part of ongoing management.
As the new planting beds in and begins to thrive, the restored Flower Garden Lake will be a fantastic location for both wildlife and our visitors in spring and going forward.
This work is part of Greenwich Park Revealed - a four-year, £8m project to restore and protect the park, supported by National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery Community Fund.