Olympic Park Gold Meadows

2021

Olympic Park Masterplan: LDA Design

Planting Design: Nigel Dunnett

Landscape Contractor: Willerbys

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The Olympic Gold Meadows were a major feature of the Olympic Park in London for the 2012 Olympic Games.  These meadows surrounded the main stadium and were a highly visible aspect of the world festival atmosphere of the park during the games.  The brief was to develop a series of strongly colour-themed annual ‘flower-field’ mixes that could be direct-seeded into the site. The requirement was for continuous high-impact flowering from early July through to mid September.  This was achieved through a careful balancing of species and colours to achieve this effect through successional layers.  The main seed mix was for the ‘Olympic Gold Meadows’, which started with blue, orange and yellow in July and transitioned through to pure sheets of gold in August and September.

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Small trial areas were set up onsite in 2010 to test the mixtures, and following amendment, they were sown on a large scale in 2011, again to test how they worked.  These two years of onsite trials and tests led to a final amendment of the seed mixes that were sown in 2012.   The seeds were sown onto a sandy engineered 'low fertility topsoil' (the contamination on this former industrial site meant that the natural soils couldn't be used) in spring 2012 and flowering commenced in early July and continued through the Olympic Games and Para Olympics periods through August and September.  

 

These meadows were designed specifically to be a highlight for the 2012 games, and were subsequently replaced in 2013 by native plantings.  The main seed mix pictured here is available, with some slight modifications, as the 'Sundance Mix' from Pictorial Meadows.​​