All the green

A genuinely nice feature of Northolt are the many parks. It's a shame that on a map they look like this.

Award Winning Design

Formerly neglected parkland, the Northala Fields park opened to the public in March 2008. The redevelopment project created a picturesque green space for the community and biodiverse habitats for wildlife. In fact, each hill has different soil conditions, supporting different wildflower and grass seeds (Ealing Council, 2022). It is no surprise, therefore, that the project garnered significant attention. In 2009 it won the UK Landscape Institute's best Design over 5Ha, HW Landscape Amenity, for the "outstanding commitment to working with, and involving, the community in the pursuit of green space goals". That same year the park was also a finalist for the World Architecture Award (Rowbotham, 2009).

Ecofriendly

.So what's so special about it? A project by Peter Fink and Igor Marko, the park hosts four man made hills (yes, the ones with the different grass and flower combos), functioning as a barrier from the perpetual noise of the A40. The environmental benefits don't end there; the hills were made from construction spoil, reusing the rubble of the Wembley Towers and that created during the building of Westfield London. Instead of being transported all the way to a landfill site, the rubble took a less than 10 mile journey through West London (London Gardens Trust, 2015).

My adopted garden

Living near Northala Fields has been great, apart from the nightly blood-curdling screeching of foxes living in its wooded borders, and the occasional encounter with a dodgy person; it's been picnics in the sun, spotting newts and frogs, forest fairy photoshoots, even 'ice skating' sans skates on the ponds in the few truly cold winters.

The four mounds, along with the neon McDonald's Drive Thru sign, are key features of the Northolt skyline. They are the four holy monoliths signifying proximity to home after torturous hours of holding in pee, stuck in an A40 traffic jam. Then you climb them, and you can see everything, even the faint silhouettes of the London Eye and the gherkin on a clear day.

References:

Ealing Council (n.d) Northala Fields. Available at: https://www.ealing.gov.uk/info/201136/parks_in_the_borough/663/greenford_parks/2 (Accessed: 7 November 2021).

Rowbotham, R. (2009) 'Major awards for Northala Fields - Europe's largest land art', Public Art Online, 19 November. Available at: http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/whatsnew/projects/article.php/Major+awards+for+Northala+Fields+-+Europe%E2%80%99s+largest+land+art.html (Accessed: 7 November 2021).

London Gardens Trust (2015) Northala Fields. Available at: https://londongardenstrust.org/features/northala.htm (Accessed: 7 November 2021).