6 minute read
The Pursuit of Landscape Greatness
A private golf course built on the site of a Capability Brown Park is being transformed into a public park and home to an extension to the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC)
Andy Wayro
All England Lawn Tennis Club
The Championships – the only Grand Slam on grass in the world – is arguably one of Britain’s most treasured events. Living and breathing this history whilst staying at the forefront of international tennis means we must push boundaries for continuous improvement in order to preserve and honour our traditions. We aim to apply our core values of excellence, heritage, respect and integrity to all aspects of our organisation. Our acquisition in 2018 of the Wimbledon Park Golf Course – comprising 29ha of Grade II* Registered Park & Garden (RPG) currently registered as ‘Heritage at Risk’ – represents a fantastic opportunity to test these values and deliver on our commitment to the UN Sport for Climate Action Framework and to our own AELTC Environment Positive strategy. This encompasses the key pillars of net zero carbon, biodiversity net gain, resource efficiency and inspiring wider action by 2030. We have the opportunity to deliver a truly world class venue for tennis whilst championing a landscape and ecology-lead approach.
The site’s history is rich and layered with change. In 1765, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was employed by the great grandson of the Duchess of Marlborough, Earl Spencer, to transform this landscape into an idealised English Parkland Estate. Brown ‘painted’ the landscape with a palette of water, grassland and trees. Wimbledon Park was once regarded as one of Brown’s finest works. Only a fragment of his landscape survives, but with this project we have a unique opportunity to recapture some of his design and vision. Designing 39 lawn tennis courts and associated paths and infrastructure within this landscape was a challenge risen to by our landscape architects at LUC. It meant integrating the lawn tennis courts sensitively amongst the veteran trees on a sloping site, working carefully with the contours to create as natural a result as possible. Proposed paths are sinuous and kept to the minimum to reduce impact. Tree planting echoes Brown’s style of ‘clumps’ and ‘scatters’, and is used to reveal and frame vistas, to disrupt and soften lines and to help reunite the fragmented RPG.
Brown dammed two brooks, creating a lake that remains largely intact. This was pragmatic as well as aesthetic, and has provided enormous benefits to people, animals and birds over the centuries. It is one of the largest freshwater bodies in south London and is a registered reservoir. Over time, the southern end of the lake has disappeared, the brooks that feed the lake have been forced underground and the lake has slowly silted up. We will reverse all these changes and in partnership with the lake owner, LB Merton, we will desilt the lake, increasing water depth and quality. Extensive planting including reedbeds, waterlilies and pockets of wet woodland will create protected areas of rich habitat for flora and fauna, creating a wide and diverse lake ecosystem.
Our site-wide hydrology strategy provides a holistic and dynamic response to water across the site (with its heavy clay pan soil profile and perched water table) modelled for 100-year flood plus climate change. Margin and Bigden brooks will be ‘daylighted’ from their narrow culverts to alleviate prolonged localised flooding. An extensive connected system of swales, ponds, and open water will provide greatly increased capacity for the site to slow, clean and hold water.
Visualisation of the proposed parkland during The Championships.
© AELTC
Visualisation of the southern parkland – A new park for London.
© AELTC
Our site is a part of a larger and important ecological network which extends across much of south-west London. We are working with LUC ecologists and local experts to make sure we take every opportunity to strengthen this network and respond to local and regional priorities. For example, the soils below the golf course top layer are rare and unusually low in phosphorous. They are ideally suited to the creation of acid grassland, a Local Priority habitat, hence we will create large areas, valuable for biodiversity and carbon capture, using locally sourced seed. Whilst we await the passing of the Environment Bill, we have taken a pro-active approach, using the latest Defra BNG guidance and metric as an iterative design tool, to push for increasing environmental net gain. We are on track to achieve an Urban Greening Factor score of .97 and over 10% Biodiversity Net Gain. The latter was challenging as we are starting from a baseline of an almost entirely green and blue site with over a thousand trees.
The population of 41 veteran trees supports extremely valuable fungi, bacteria and invertebrates. We procured individual management plans and specialist surveys to help us protect and enhance them. Last year, we harvested acorns and began a propagation programme to capture the genetic legacy of the Brownian veteran oaks. We now have several thousand young saplings growing on in nurseries. Tree planting is central to this project; from the start we made it a priority to ensure delivery of a strong, healthy, genetically diverse tree population using species best suited to the site, its design history, our changing climate and biodiversity. Currently there are around one thousand trees on site, varying widely in condition; by 2028 there will be more than double this number, of British sown and grown provenance. Our landscape architects are working with leading nurseries and specialists to help ensure we specify for maximum resilience against climate change, pests and diseases and for maximum provision of green infrastructure services such as improved thermal performance. We are writing a strict biosecurity policy to be applied across the AELTC estate.
We are committed to the stewardship of this landscape and its history. We know it to be a precious resource and an important legacy. Long-term ecological and biodiversity monitoring and evaluation will be a critical piece. Our estate-wide management strategies are designed as live documents, helping us to meet and exceed best practice and to test, trial and adapt innovative sustainable techniques.
There is currently no public access to the site – it is a private golf course. We proposed to open the southern parkland (9.4 hectares) to the local community throughout the year so everyone can enjoy this new highquality ecologically and historically rich green space. We are also creating a circular route all around the lake which will greatly increase public access to nature with all its health and wellbeing benefits. A new accessible east-west route will connect Church Road to the public park creating active green links between neighbourhoods. We must ensure that our new venue works to fight all three interrelated crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and threats to human wellbeing,
We have taken ownership of this landscape at a critical moment in society when we must all change the way we look after our natural resources and decisively shift towards protecting and restoring nature on an unprecedented scale. With our high public profile, we hope to inspire other organisations and individuals to reorientate their priorities. We are committing to the whole journey, not just the beginning. From local and grass roots involvement through to the international arena, we will continue to strive for exemplary stewardship.
Historical Wimbledon Park Plan – Attributed to John Haynes (c.1770-1785) with AELTC existing (purple) and proposed site (green) overlayed.
© AELTC
Andy Wayro is Landscape Design Manager at The All England Lawn Tennis Club
