Bushy Park

The second largest of London’s eight Royal Parks, Bushy Park is a vast green space with many secret areas for visitors to discover and enjoy.

Not far from Hampton Court Palace, Bushy Park's history is linked to the palace, yet retains a distinctly rural feel. It’s a wonderful place for you to take a walk, soak up heritage and unwind; you may even spot a deer!

As the charity for The Royal Parks, we work with them to enhance, protect and preserve this fantastic Park for future generations.

With your fantastic support, we’re able to reach out to make Bushy Park part of more people’s lives by raising funds for a wide variety of projects from wildlife conservation and landscape restoration, to community sport, education and art.

Tiffany Fountains

Thanks to a wonderful partnership with The Tiffany & Co Foundation we’re currently restoring and renewing the ornamental and drinking fountains across London’s eight Royal Parks, including in Bushy Park.

Not only does this project help to conserve, protect and enhance the natural history and heritage of Bushy Park, it also gives its visitors access to more fresh drinking water and helps minimise the vast number of plastic water bottles discarded in the Park every year.

• Find out more about Tiffany - Across the Water

Fabulous Fungus

In 2009, we funded a specialist field mycologist to conduct Bushy Park’s first ever formal fungus survey. The survey consisted of 20 separate visits to record species and map their locations using GPS.

The survey helped to develop a clearer picture of the variety of fungi in Bushy Park, including identifying many species whose existence relies solely on the trees and shrubs of the Park and this, in turn, also helps to ensure they are protected in the future.

Baroque Splendour

In 2009, Bushy Park’s splendid 18^th century Water Gardens were officially re-opened. Built by the first Earl Halifax in 1710, the gardens feature a Baroque-style collection of pools, cascades, basins and a canal. In recent times, they have been used as a hospital for Canadian troops, as a US barracks during WW2 and by the Ministry of Defence in the Cold War.

The restoration included de-silting the ponds, overhauling the water engineering system and restoring the cascade walls. Formal landscaping completed the reclamation of these magical gardens.

This restoration was thanks to joint funding from ourselves, The Royal Parks, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Crown Estate and The Friends of Bushy & Home Parks

Caring for Bushy Park Veterans

The veteran trees in Bushy Park not only form a great part of the Park’s charm, they are one of the reasons why the Park has been designated a site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation.

With our funding, the Royal Parks Arboriculturist was able to conduct an in-depth survey of 51 extra-special trees. One of these trees, considered amongst the ‘Top Ten’ in the UK and affectionately known as ‘Fat Gut', is a sweet chestnut, (Castanea sativa), about 17m high with a magnificent girth of 9.55m!

The tree survey was used to form long-term – up to 30 years – veteran tree management plans and to ensure effective biodiversity management to conserve the Parks’ decaying wood habitats.