King Street Rain Gardens Praised by Hammersmith Society

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Eco-project becomes first nominee for 2025 Environment Award

The King Street rain garden.

May 5, 2025

The Hammersmith Society has given high praise to the creation of two rain gardens at the western end of King Street.

The society has made the eco-project the first nominee for the 2025 Nancye Goulden Award, the category for smaller projects in its annual Environment Awards.

The new green space, created earlier this spring, runs from the corner of Beavor Lane towards Standish Road. Hammersmith & Fulham Council says it was part-funded by its £5million Green Investment scheme, which supports projects that benefit local people and the environment.

The council says these rain gardens allow water to absorb naturally into the ground while providing a home to local wildlife, unlike the concrete pavement. As well as looking attractive, they help to protect adjacent homes and businesses against flooding and also create an attractive barrier between shops and the road, opening up possibilities for restaurants to offer outdoor dining,

Volunteers from Hammersmith Community Gardens Association helped the council to bring the space to life with carefully selected plants, including rosemary and lavender and spring flowers like tulips and daffodils.

The Hammersmith Society had previously expressed concerns about the replacement of the street’s bus lane by a temporary cycle lane, especially as it also included problematic ‘floating bus stops’.

However, the society is now praising the creation of the two rain gardens, together with gravel replacements for a significant number of tree pits, calling them very significant improvements to King Street’s environment.

The society says: “ The gardens are already maturing after only a few weeks and will surely only get better in time. The adjacent gravel tree pits are a perfect example of what the society has campaigned on for well over a decade, awarding wooden spoons to the council in successive years for failing to improve the ‘asphalt situation’ around the borough’s trees.”

The hard landscaping and tree pits were carried out by the council’s contractors Conway, while the planting was undertaken by Hammersmith Community Gardens Association, partly by local volunteers.

The society says, “ It didn’t seem to take Conway very long to dig out the old asphalt in around a dozen pits, and replace it with permeable and attractive real gravel."

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