Pinboard 16 September: Parklife London app gets you more from nearby green spaces

We love the sound of Parklife London, a free new online and mobile app that maps London’s parks and green spaces. Not only can you use it in an unfamiliar area to find out where there are parks nearby, but you can also find out if said parks are worth schlepping to – as the app lets you home in on details such as whether it’s good for dog-walking (or, indeed, avoiding dogs), if it’s particularly kid-friendly, has a community garden you can get involved with, some fascinating history or is just that perfect, quiet little oasis you’re craving, for a moment of peace in your day. (If only the weather hadn’t just turned – still, bracing walks in wellies can be nice…)

The app has been launched by City Bridge Trust, the City of London Corporation’s charity today. As such, the site itself is a little slow… we’d give it a couple of days to settle in as it does look worth the wait. Meanwhile we asked a Parklife person, Ben Lattimore, for a bit of a leafy overview of south London. “The rest of London may have famous green spaces like Hyde Park, Hampstead Heath or Epping Forest,” he says, “but it’s south of the river hat you find some of the capital’s greenest boroughs.”

“Southwark is comfortably one of London’s ‘greenest’,” he continues, “with over 130 parks and open spaces – and many of its parks have stories that rival their more famous northern cousins. As an example, Belair Park, with the beautiful former Belair House – Beauberry House since 2002, originally built in 1785 – remains a beautiful location. The landscape is Grade II listed, including an artificial lake formed by the damming of the ancient river Effra. It is more than just an historic artefact however, keeping up with the times with tennis courts, a wildlife area and skate parks. The park is home to a wide variety of fauna and flora – everything from water birds and bats to wildflowers and mature oaks.

“Lambeth is far from lacking in green spaces either,” he adds, “with over 60 parks, gardens and open spaces. Streatham Common is just one great example. With a history dating back as far as the Norman Conquest and the Domesday Book, it has been used as public or ‘common’ ground for centuries. It offers unique views across the rest of south London – and half of the Common is now listed as a ‘Local Nature Reserve’, including Lambeth’s largest areas of acid grassland and woodland.”

We could go on ourselves. From the love-it-or-hate-it mammoth revamp of Burgess Park to the secret smallness of Loughborough Park, a teeny Victorian circular affair, tucked away off Coldharbour Lane behind the Somerleyton Estate. And Wyck Gardens near Loughborough Junction, though not particularly pretty, is home to the incongruous riding stables and charity, Ebony Horse Club, which aims to get the local youth in the saddle. There’s also the lovely, pocket-sized but adoringly tended Bonnington Square Gardens in Vauxhall, the Melior Street Allotments in SE1 (which you can go to a special outdoor dinner in this week) and the home of the flamboyantly tropical scene above (featured in our previous story about quiet spaces in south London). Do you have a favourite or little-known south London green space? Let us know.

Parklifelondon.org