London’s Pocket Parks: Eden Dock, E14

This is a new pocket park that partially floats over one of the docks in Canary Wharf, but in line with modern fashions has more seating and decking than planting.

The pocket park can be roughly described as having two zones—one more of a raised series of steps to sit on and the other a long path that runs along one side of the docks. Dotted around all the seating are lots of planting, some decorative trees, and, umm, foliage statues.

The first zone is the raised seating, which acts as a bridge up and over what are the emergency exits from the Jubilee line tube station. The exits haven’t been blocked off naturally but are now hidden underneath the decking. The space is basically double-sided seating, so it is a utilitarian space to sit when waiting outside the tube station on one side, and there are softer wooden seats for facing the dock.

Candidly, from early images, that is all I was expecting, but it’s the rest of the pocket park that’s much more interesting, as they have created a floating deck in the dock itself with more seating but much more planting.

The planting is on the deck, as well as water plants in the dock itself, and right up by the deck, a slightly submerged shelf that the local ducks had already noticed.

I was also pleased to see that the barrier around the dock edge of the decking is very low and more of a trip warning than the high barrier you see elsewhere. A reminder that most pavements next to water, such as canals, seem to work perfectly well without loads of fencing along them.

There also seems to be a video screen in one corner that might show the water under the dock—or something else entirely. The lack of explanatory signage is a bit irksome.

However, what also marks the park out as a bit different are the statues.

These are a living artwork, Nature Rising, made up 20 statures made of ligustrum which will grow and distort over the next few years.

In a way, they reminded me of the Berry Man, the old tradition recreated by Morris Dancers of having a person paraded around covered in plants. Others might see Antony Gormley’s hand in the concept.

One of the nice things when Canary Wharf was created was the decision not to fill in the docks and retain them as open space, not just because it’s more interesting to look at but also because it pushes the buildings further apart so there’s less shadow in the estate. However, they still had a fairly hard edge around them, so the new floating park has softened it somewhat and turned a space people walked around into somewhere they might want to linger.

Something that’ll need fixing is that the DLR tracks passing over the decking also leak, so there’s quite a waterfall in one place, and reminded me of the drainpipe they used to have on the other side of the dock, that emptied over the pavement.