London park to provide oasis for humans and hedgehogs alike

When the Queen Elizabeth II garden opens in Regent’s Park this month, the first people to visit the Royal Parks’ £5m biodiversity project will quickly discover they are not, in fact, the first visitors.

- Donna Ferguson

That honour belongs to a hairy-footed flower bee, a breeding pair of geese, some dragonfly nymphs, a flock of grey wagtails, a prickle of hedgehogs, an armada of newts, a flutter of spring butterflies and a cheeky fox.

The London parks body has transformed the former brownfield site - historically used as a horticultural nursery - into an 8,000 sq metre (two-acre) paradise for flora and fauna, bringing about a predicted 184% increase in biodiverse habitat.

Greenhouses, loose gravel and concrete have been replaced by more than 40 new trees, about 2,000 sq metres of wildflower meadow, more than 5,000 sq metres of climate-resilient plants and an extra 100 metres of native mixed hedgerow.

A large ornamental pond of naturally filtered water provides a new aquatic habitat for plants, insects and amphibians, while a former water storage tower - which offers visitors a panoramic view of the garden - has swift nesting and bat roosting boxes integrated into its new roof.

Since the garden was completed in January, a wide range of wildlife has already been spotted using the newly created habitats, including a fox that visits on an almost daily basis, says Matthew Halsall, the manager and landscape architect behind the project. “It’s very cheeky - it likes to chew through the guide ropes, which is a little inconvenient - but it is a very welcome visitor,” he says.

Bees and butterflies are thriving among the 200,000 spring bulbs planted in the garden, and the park’s longstanding resident hedgehogs - the last breeding population in central London - have been recorded exploring the grounds.