New Year's Day stroll

Happy New Year! A beautiful sunny winter's day today, and the chance for a short stroll to work off some of the excesses of New Year's Eve. Our stroll took in Chiswick Park, the business park designed by Richard Rogers Partnership, which features beautiful landscaping by Charles Funke Associates/West8.



The landscaping is open to the public, and appears to have a very strong Japanese influence in terms of layout and planting. The centrepiece is a large lake, complete with cascade, bridge and island complete with bonsai-style tree. The formality of the landscaping echoes the rhythms of the buildings (Chiswick Park is rather unusual because of the almost fanatical consistency of its architecture).



We even came face-to-face with a juvenile heron, who was quite happy to stand a couple of feet away, appraising us with his beady eyes!