Wimbledon Park, in the London Borough of Merton, is a product of the landscaping genius of 18th century designer Capability Brown. At its head is a beautiful boating lake, fed from nearby springs. These days, the park also contains playing fields, a bowling green, tennis courts and a beautiful state of the art children’s pool, complete with fountains and water jets.
It was the success of the Elisabeth Pool which gave the Wimbledon Park Heritage Group confidence to go ahead with a second major project within the Park. For many years, the lakeside bank had been scarred by the remnants of a 1950s waterfall, which had become a dilapidated eye-sore.
The Heritage Group decided to renovate it to create an all year round water feature to complement the Elisabeth Pool. A local designer was found - Matthew Childs. Matthew had recently retrained to become a landscape gardener after a life changing experience: Caught up in the London bombings of July 7th 2005 he had been seriously injured. Following his recovery, his life took its new direction and The Wimbledon Park Waterfall Garden would be his first major project.
Once Matthew's plan was on paper, the Heritage Group began searching for someone to build it. Sim Comfort, chairman of the Wimbledon Park Heritage Group, says it was a project with many facets: "It involved hard landscaping, planting, plumbing, silt traps and pipe work. So we were delighted when Visible Changes - a specialist landscaping company stepped forward with all the different skills to carry out the entire project. Once they'd estimated the cost, we began searching for funds."
It was then that Sim approached Valencia Communities Fund, who were happy to award the project £31,500 towards the total cost of approximately £70,000. Building work began in September 2010 and, despite being hampered by the cold, snowy, December weather, it was successfully completed at the end of January 2011.
