Watermans Park by Petrow Harley Landscape Architects

Watermans Park – A Riverside Renewal

Short summary:
Watermans Park is a sensitively transformed post-industrial site that supports both human and non-human life while preserving local heritage and celebrating the performance of the tidal cycles of the River Thames. Shaped by community input, including local schoolchildren, this low-maintenance park now fosters wellbeing, biodiversity, and cultural activity. Navigating soil and contamination constraints, it stands as a celebration of natural rhythm where daily tidal shifts and seasonal cycles shape the daily life of the park, and the views of those passing by the Brantford High Street.

Project Overview:
Watermans Park is a revitalised riverside landscape on the historic site of the former Brentford Gas Works, situated along a scenic stretch of the River Thames. Once an industrial hub for coal barges, today the area has been transformed into a dynamic and inclusive public space that celebrates its heritage while serving the contemporary needs of the Brentford community.

In 2020, the London Borough of Hounslow, in collaboration with the Friends of Watermans Park, launched a major regeneration initiative to reimagine this underused green space. Completed in 2022, the redesigned park balances ecological sensitivity, cultural memory, and vibrant community use.

Design Concept: Heritage Meets Community
Rooted in the site’s rich industrial past, the design of Watermans Park honours its legacy while creating a future-oriented landscape. Original features such as dock edge timbers and the 1997 sculptural metal arches by artist Shelly Thomas were retained and celebrated as part of the new scheme, anchoring the unique historic identity of the site.

The park takes full advantage of its riverside linear setting. Brentford Ait, with its mature willows and thriving wildlife, provides a living green backdrop and frames views that change with the tides. The new design harnesses this natural setting while opening the park to a broader range of users through improved access, amenities, and community spaces.

Key Features and Enhancements:
•Community-Centred Design: Extensive public consultation, including with local schools and stakeholders, directly informed the park’s layout and features. Children from Green Dragon and St. Paul’s Primary Schools helped shape the playground design and painted bird boxes, which are now a joyful part of the landscape. The park will also feature a community garden for residents to grow fruits and vegetables, with volunteering sessions for both adults and local schoolchildren, who have offered valuable design ideas.
•Active and Inclusive Spaces: The park offers a diversity of functions, including outdoor fitness equipment, yoga platforms, a basketball hoop, table tennis, a children’s playground, and a community garden. These spaces promote physical health, social interaction, and intergenerational engagement.
•Sustainable Planting: Given the site’s history and shallow topsoil conditions due to contamination capping, all new vegetation was carefully selected to thrive in limited depths while enhancing biodiversity. Wildflower meadows and native plantings contribute to habitat creation and seasonal interest.
•Connectivity and Accessibility: The introduction of new pathways, accessible entrances, and a cycle link has improved the park’s integration with the wider urban fabric.
•Cultural Activation: The park is now not only a popular local meeting point, but also a lively cultural venue, regularly hosting music performances by local bands and events organised by the Friends of Watermans Park. It has become a true community hub.

Design Challenges and Innovation:
The project had to address the legacy of industrial contamination. The entire park sits on capped land, requiring careful coordination to ensure that planting, infrastructure, and new interventions did not disturb the protective layers and the remained heritage elements. Creative solutions were developed for planting in shallow soils and accommodating root structures within these constraints demonstrating a commitment to ecological resilience and design ingenuity.

Project Values:
Watermans Park is an exemplary case of landscape architecture transforming a post-industrial site into a thriving civic space. It embodies the power of design to bridge past and future, nature and city, memory and function. The project’s success lies not only in its physical transformation but in its ability to foster community ownership, ecological awareness, and a renewed sense of place.
In a rapidly urbanising area undergoing significant regeneration, Watermans Park serves as a vital, accessible green lung – an everyday landscape with extraordinary public value.

• Name of the project:
Watermans Park, Brentford High Street, Brentford, London, TW8 0BJ

• Project typology:
Public Park Renovation

• All landscape architecture offices involved in the design of landscape:
Petrow Harley Landscape Architects, The Studio, 57 Lime Grove, New Malden KT3 3TP

• All architecture offices involved in the design:
Petrow Harley Landscape Architects, The Studio, 57 Lime Grove, New Malden KT3 3TP

• Other credits:
• Client 1: London Borough of Hounslow, 2nd Floor, Hounslow House, 7 Bath Road, Hounslow, Middlesex TW33EB
• Client 2: TFL – Transport for London (cycle path and lighting)
• Friends of Watermans Park (NPO)
• Quantity survey: Huntley Cartwright
• Landscape Contractor: Blakedown Landscapes (SE) Ltd, Halebourne Nurseries, Halebourne Lane, Chobham, Surrey,GU24 8SL