Poole Park Life
A £2.7 million Heritage Fund Grant
Awarded June 2017, completed 2021
Whilst most people have always recognised that Poole Park is a special place to visit, by 2014 parts of the infrastructure and many of the features we value were deteriorating, becoming harder to maintain. These included heritage items such as the 51 acre saline lagoon (boating lake) with its bridge and sluice gate surrounds, areas of hard surfacing, the play area on West Field and the gradual erosion of the Park’s original Victorian design.
In August 2014 Borough of Poole (now BCP Council) and the Friends of Poole Park submitted a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) Parks for People Programme for Poole Park Life, a £2.7m improvement project. The application was a demanding two-round process lasting 2 years, with the main bid being submitted at the end of February 2017, and it all felt very well worthwhile when its success was announced 4 months later!
Improvements carried out by the 4 year project
Click on any of the project boxes below to link to the original PPL website which is still online (external pages open in a new window)
Outdoor Gyms
New fitness equipment has been installed at the lagoon, Copse Close & beyond
Heritage & Landscape
Original features restored, beautiful gardens created & a whole new park experience!
Play Improvements
Two new playgrounds! Visit the Plant Explorers & Jungle Adventure play areas
Access Works
We’ve slowed traffic and made the park more pedestrian-friendly
Lakes & Lagoon
Water quality and biodiversity improvements for visitors & wildlife
Including:
- ‘Voices from the Past’ is a collection of nine imagined short stories available to listen to throughout the park via QR codes; each story is from a different moment in the Park’s history, each linked to a different location in the Park, and each told from a different child’s point of view [listen to all nine stories here]
- We made lots of small improvements to the Wall Memorial and Park Entrances ensuring the park’s heritage can be enjoyed by residents and visitors for years to come!
- New gardens – a Rose Garden and Quiet Garden full of beautiful planting, seating and
- We refurbished the fountain! It hadn’t been moved or disassembled since its installation in 1990, which caused a couple of issues, but it’s back in place now and looks like new [read about it]
- We are developing a new Plant Collector’s garden near the crazy golf, with the first planting using a range of exotic shrubs to add a sense of exploration to complement the new signage and interpretation that will be a feature of this space (the old putting green).
- We continue to monitor the ecology of the lakes and lagoon following the water quality and biodiversity improvement works in 2019
- Our project website is still online for any one that would like to read about the works