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Queens Garden: Green Flag Award

Last Wednesday Queens Garden, adjacent to both The Glades and Kentish Way, was inspected by an expert from Hillingdon council, to confirm that it continued to be up to the standard required for the award of a Green Flag. While we await his report, all concerned remain confident. If successful this park would have obtained this award for a fourth year running. #GreenFlag #idVerde

Inspector (second from left) and the idVerde team

The Green Flag Award scheme seeks to raise the standards of public parks & green spaces. In England this scheme is run by the Keep Britain Tidy group.

The Green Flag Award® scheme recognises and rewards well managed parks and green spaces, setting the benchmark standard for the management of recreational outdoor spaces across the United Kingdom and around the world.

Green Flag Award
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Look what I have found – Ha Ha!

Ha Ha! revealed

In Bromley Palace Park (aka Civic Centre Grounds) you can find a number of Grade 2 listed features; Ice House, Cascade & Fernery, mock Medieval Folly plus a Ha-Ha! The latter originally consisted of a wall & ditch to keep livestock in the adjacent fields, out of the parkland around the Bishop’s Palace. 

The fields and associated animals have long since gone, and have now become the many houses and gardens on the ‘Palace Estate’. However the wall of the Ha Ha! still remains. Recently the undergrowth has been cleared away and the brickwork exposed again as seen below.

This and the other listed features are on the Heritage England list of at risk buildings etc. They are working with Bromley Council, the site owners, in order to restore and protect them for future generations.

You can find out more about this site at Bromley Palace Park (aka Civic Centre).

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Broomtime is here!

Visit Martins Hill soon and see the splashes of vivid yellow, as only in flower for a short time. Not like that spiky ‘look a like’ gorse! Bromley named after this plant.

Broom poster
This plant, after which Bromley is named, is now in flower

You can find out more about this plant and the place where it can be found HERE.

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A country path?

You might think that this photograph was taken somewhere in the countryside. However this path, fringed on both sides with cow parsley, was taken earlier today on Martins Hill, some five minutes walk from Bromley Market Square! It shows that you do not have to go far to enjoy the benefits of the natural world. Our town centre parks are each slightly different but all our ‘lungs’, in this otherwise heavily built up world. So please value your parks and visit them soon.

It was interesting that a passer by had previously mentioned that this path “was overgrown and needed cutting back”. Strange how people have different ideas about tidying up nature!