With the London 2012 Olympic over and the Paralympic Games soon to begin, but it won’t be long the all the teams and fans will be at home and the Olympics Park will be empty. The question always comes up what now for the venues, parks and infrastructure that was built for the Olympics? Well the legacy planning has been in the works with the Mayor setting up the London Legacy Development Corporation that will be “setting and maintaining standards for quality of design, construction and urban planning, to ensure a sustainable and enduring legacy for the Park”. Continue reading 2012 London Olympics | Legacy
TV Gardener Charlie Dimmock helping local children with planting
The first of 4,000 new semi-mature trees are taking root in the London’s Olympic Park with around 100 ash, cherry and hazel trees, grown in Hampshire, already planted. The first of 300,000 wetland plants, grown in Norfolk and Wales for the UK’s largest ever urban river and wetland planting, were laid on the river banks today by Minister for Sport and the Olympics Hugh Robertson, TV Gardener Charlie Dimmock, Olympic Gold medal winner Jonathan Edwards, Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) Chairman John Armitt and children from the Olympic Park construction crew.
The new reed beds are being created in a large wetland bowl in the north of the Olympic Park, formerly a 100 year old landfill site, where visitors during the Games will be able to relax and watch the action in 2012 on live screens. In legacy the riverside area will be a tranquil space for people and wildlife which will also help protect 5,000 properties in the area from flooding.
Over 30 species of native reeds, rushes, grasses, sedges, wet wildflowers and irises have been grown initially by Salix in its nursery on the Gower peninsular in Wales with around a third grown from cuttings and seeds collected in and around the Olympic Park before construction started in 2008.
You can watch the park turn from brown to green with two new webcams