Introduction
West Ham Park’s Nursery is unique in many ways. It is a
successful operation, which has back up support from the Park and
is essentially self funding. It is a truly wonderful asset which
has the potential of providing a unique and valuable service for
the benefit of the Park, the community, the City of London and
beyond.
The Nursery operates under a Charity Scheme, within a local
authority setting of the City of London Corporation, with its own
set of corporate, departmental and locally aligned objectives.
Our vision
“A dependable, sustainable and unique Nursery operation
dedicated to supporting the recreational uses of West Ham Park and
providing first class plants and bespoke floral design, highly
respected by its customers and the community.”
Summary of services
Flexibility in plant choice, growing capacity, large standing
out area for acclimatisation and storage space is provided to
clients through excellent facilities, in close proximity to the
City.
The Nursery has two key areas of service delivery, bedding
production, with over 200,000 bedding plants produced annually and
floral decorations.
All bedding is grown on site in peat free compost which has
significantly reduced the use of water given the peat free medium
used has excellent moisture retention. Furthermore, this commitment
exceeds the government set target of reducing peat use by 40% in
growing media by 2005 and 90% in growing media by 2010.
Download the new Nursery Plant Catalogue
(PDF, 4.3mb) with photographs and plant sizes bedding list.
The second area of service delivery is the provision of floral
decorations. The Nursery provides floral decorations to a range of
City of London Corporation functions held at the Guildhall, Mansion
House and at a variety of annual Committee dinners and lunches.
Operating within these two service areas is our commitment to
sustainability, community education and staff training. This is
evidenced through
- Six educational visits for schools and adult learning groups
each year
- Mentoring of the West Ham Park Apprentice at the Nursery
- At least five visits by a variety of horticulture focused
groups per annum
Since 2004, the Nursery has made strides in improving its
environmental and sustainability credentials through adjustments to
service delivery by replacing two petrol golf carts with
alternative electric powered golf carts and providing a drought
tolerant plant list to all of our clients to reduce watering.
Further improvements in the glasshouses included three new gas
condensing boilers which has significantly decreased gas
consumption and biological control has also been introduced in all
our glasshouses to reduce use of pesticides.
In the last five years, modernisation has taken place to improve
service delivery through a staffing review, infrastructure
improvements and equipment purchases including expansion in the
stock ground by 9% to enable wider accommodation of plants and
stock storage and a successful planning application for a
replacement and larger poly tunnel to increase growing and plant
production space.
The Nursery Business Plan
The Business Plan has been written in consultation with Members,
key department colleagues, staff, clients and stakeholders. It
reflects upon the options, achievements and successes from previous
Nursery Reviews and sets out the challenges and key priorities for
the Nursery for the next five years.
Download the Nursery Business Plan
here (PDF, 1.2mb)
Our key achievements since the 2004 Nursery Review
The Nursery implemented the use of a peat free compost mix
resulting in 52% decrease in water use and practise the collection
and recycling of plastic pots and trays and cardboard packaging.
Further biological control has resulted in a 58% decrease in the
use of pesticides and replacement of boilers and pipe work has
produced a 50% decrease in gas consumption.