This is a deceptively simple-looking pocket park if you aren’t aware of what used to be here – it used to be an ugly car park ramp.
There used to be a ramp leading up to a 1st-floor car park, but that had long been disused, so in 2014, half the ramp was removed. A narrow alley that squeezed between the ramp and the block of flats, and formed a very unappealing entrance to many people’s homes was now a much wider open area.
Via the City of London council document
That left the rump of the upper ramp though, and a lot of concrete in need of cleaning up. Following local consultations, what the City of London then did was to turn the remaining ramp into a stepped garden area, paved the rest and lined them with more planting in corten steel curving pots.
The planting has been chosen specially to be low-irrigation so that they can thrive in planting containers which are of necessity fairly shallow in depth to work on the old car park ramp.
The space that had been underneath the demolished ramp was relaid with York stone paving.
It’s not a park to sit in, but a corridor of planting that’ll over time fill up the space with greenery where once there had been just a polluted concrete car park ramp that plunged the area into shadows and grime.
It just shows what can be achieved when people are put ahead of cars.
The project was funded from the Section 106 agreement related to the development of the 100 Bishopsgate and 5 Broadgate towers.
“It just shows what can be achieved when people are put ahead of cars.” I totally agree, Ian. 🙂