The unsung gardening legacy of London 2012
Anyone who browses the range of seeds for sale online here at Seeds By Post (http://www.seedsbypost.co.uk) cannot have failed to notice the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games that have taken both capital and country by storm over the last few weeks. With the closing ceremony having ended, the focus now turns away from the medal-winning performances and more towards the legacy of the Games, which has left even gardeners something to get excited about.
It is no secret that official efforts have been made to incorporate Olympic-themed events across London and the UK that have little direct relation to athletics. Indeed, the gardening link with the last fortnight’s festivities has been apparent right from the first sight of the ‘green and pleasant land’ of the opening scene of Danny Boyle’s Olympic Games Opening Ceremony. Meanwhile, the Garden for the Games initiative has inspired green-fingered people across the country with Games-themed gardening ideas.
However, it is in many ways the Olympic Park’s wild flower meadows that have most fired the imaginations of those with an interest in buying seeds online. These meadows in Stratford, east London are now coming into flower, making especially visible one of the true legacies of the Games. Covering 100ha (247 acres), this “park with venues” is in keeping with the mood of our time, with a certain air of vulnerability that is informed by recent climate change and economic strife.
What that means, in practical terms, is that the park design is more organic in nature, with plants and mixes that require less replacement and tending and that will therefore be survivors of change. What was once a disused industrial area has had a mere 10 per cent of its waste spoil removed, with the result being that ground levels were adapted and plants are often at a higher level than the concourse. This increases the dominance of the surrounding green while lessening the infrastructure’s impact.
The new, permanent gardens – which are to be renamed the Queen Elizabeth Gardens at the end of the Games – allow you to follow the history of various plants’ introduction into Britain as you walk through the likes of the Europe Garden, Prairie Garden, Southern Hemisphere Garden and Asian Garden. With the planting of the intriguing mixtures of herbaceous plants having taken place two or three years ago, last summer saw the zones finally explode in colour.
From the South Park’s “ribbon of gold” annual meadows surrounding the stadium, to what Andrew Harland, of one of the park’s three lead landscape architects Landscape Design Associates, has described as the “sharp, geometric and quite engineered topography” of the North Park, the Olympic Park has certainly been a source of inspiration to customers of mail order seeds. With further development anticipated after the Games, it looks set to continue as one.
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