Urban Lakes
BritishFlora’s expertise in delivery of cost-effective Remediation of Urban Lake.
For years fish had been dying in the dirty, silted waters of Bracknell Mill Pond. When DucksBracknell Town Council, in partnership with Thames Water and the Environment Agency, resolved to transform this operational flood storage lagoon into a flagship wildlife and recreation resource, no one was more pleased than the members of the local fishing club, the Bracknell Herons.
From the start BritishFlora was appointed to act in both a project design and plant growing/supplier capacity. With over 4,000 cubic metres of contaminated silt to remediate, ledges were created to form reedbeds and a new marginal zone where native wetland plants would not only thrive, but also act in a phytoremediation capacity to improve the water quality through the absorption of heavy metals and hydrocarbons.
The Bracknell area had been subjected to various human interventions, the exact history of local reedbeds was hard to ascertain. BritishFlora therefore collected Phragmites communis seed under licence from English Nature at Fleet Pond SSSI to ensure local provenance.
Twelve months later over 40,000 local provenance reeds and aquatics were planted by BritishFlora’s Landscape team. Further design input also led to the planting of a SUDS at the inlet of the pond.
Since completion, BritishFlora has been retained to provide ongoing maintenance advice to manage large-scale waterfowl predation.
In 2005 the work on Bracknell Mill Pond was recognised at the Green Apple Awards, winning the national runner-up title in the Utilities category and also received The Good Fisheries Management Award.