Gardens in the Park
Learn about the original garden designs and listen to one of The Parks Trust’s Landscape Officers talk about the plants and city gardens.
The Park was always intended to include areas or landscape zones that would relate to a range of different moods, atmospheres and uses. In 1974 this included an Upper Park (where all the modernist and somewhat fantastical features imagined by Mahaddie would be sited), a Woodland Ridge which was to include a sculpture museum, and a Valley Walk running along the Northern edge where a watercourse would run down to the canal through an area of heavy and variegated planting.
Image 1: Early planting schema for the City Centre Park, from First Sketches – General Intent, July 1975 – submitted as part of the Section 6(1) planning submission to the Department of Environment (Buckinghamshire Archives: D-MKDC/4/4/158)
A number of different zones have since been proposed but the watercourse still follows the northern edge and takes the visitor through the planted area now known as the City Gardens. Here the designers planned to include specimens of all of the plants used in the wider city planting scheme, in the fashion of a traditional botanical garden.
Image 2: The City Gardens layout, as envisaged in MKDC’s 1986 plan for the park grid square (© Milton Keynes Development Corporation. Crown Copyright).
Listen to Luke Nixon, Operations Manager at The Parks Trust, talk about how the formal gardens are looked after, and how Milton Keynes supplies world class cricket bats from their willow trees.
Pathways zigzag around the different layers and levels of flower beds. There are many benches from which to admire the sights and scents: street furniture and signage were a key feature of the MKDC design guidelines. Andrew Mahaddie proposed a selection of bench designs for the park although these were never realised. The current park benches are carefully designed to complement the styling and form of the ‘estate fencing’ that is used to keep the sheep in the fields and to protect the veteran tress that contribute to the biodiversity of the park.
Image 3: Bench designs featuring animals, possibly for the round pond area at City Park. Mounted on card. Undated. A1 size. (© Milton Keynes Development Corporation. Crown Copyright).
Follow the Campbell Park Trail to discover the history of this Grade II listed landscape. Featuring archive photos and videos with the people who helped make the park what it is today.
