Gheluvelt Park
Gheluvelt Park is a First World War memorial park made up of a formal park and riverside conservation park with Barbourne Brook running right through the middle. At the site, you can also find The Pump House, which is now an environment centre run by the Duckworth Worcestershire Trust. With tennis courts, bandstand, and play areas to enjoy, Gheluvelt Park’s multi-use space functions as a traditional city park and an important green space providing physical and mental health benefits for citizens of all ages.
The traditional, well-manicured park with its neat lawns and manicured flower beds, while beautiful, is a legacy of Victorian Britain, illustrating our attempts to control nature and shape land for human use. Such parks are not necessarily best for cultivating a healthy biodiverse environment that takes into consideration native species and understands that nature is not neat. Wild about Worcester Way connects us to our local green spaces but also seeks to rewrite our understanding of the messier sides of nature by celebrating scrub, bramble, nettles and so much more.
As Gheluvelt Park shows, we can have both human-centred, more organised green spaces and wilder, messier sites grown specifically for wildlife. It is not only possible but essential to reconnect humans and nature and reimagine urban spaces in a way that benefits all. We can already see it with wildflower patches thriving in parks and on the side of roads. How would you reimagine the city in a way that centres biodiversity?
