Planting in the Olympic Park has finished after a two-year marathon which saw the transformation of 100 hectares (250 acres) of land on the banks of the River Lee in London into new gardens, wetlands, meadows and parkland.
RHS competition winners Rachel Read, from Colchester in Essex, and 12-year-old Hannah Clegg from Malmesbury in Wiltshire planted the last of hundreds of thousands of plants at a ceremony in London. The pair designed two gardens in the RHS Olympic Park Great British Garden, a riverside garden overlooking the Olympic stadium.
‘I feel very honoured to have been a part of such a huge and prestigious project,’ said Rachel. ‘The garden fits in so well with the feel of the whole parkland and yet has the sense of the British garden that we were trying to achieve. I’m looking forward to seeing people enjoying it for years to come.’
In all 4,000 semi-mature trees, over 300,000 wetland plants and 15,000 square metres of lawn have been planted and millions of nectar-rich annual and perennial flowers sown in huge meadows timed to flower during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. A riverside garden created by leading designer Sarah Price stretches for ½ mile along the Thames and celebrates centuries of British gardening and plant collecting, with 120,000 plants from 250 species around the world.
Source: Royal Horticulture Society – Last plant goes in at Olympic Park
