Wembley Park Walkabout

Event Information

A guided walk where you’ll learn more of the technical challenges involved in Urban Tree Planting and maintenance on a large scale

Join Julian Tollast, Head of Masterplanning and Design at Quintain, as he provides an exclusive tour of the newly completed Olympic Way, Union Park, as well as offering a glimpse of things to come.  On this tour, you will learn more about the technical challenges involved in Urban Tree Planting and maintenance at this scale, with illustrations and technical details, made accessible and appealing to all ages, interests and levels of knowledge.

Contributors

Julian Tollast is the Head of Masterplanning and Design for Quintain at Wembley Park and has been working on the project since 2005.  Julian is also a former founding trustee of the National Park City Foundation.

Organisations

The transformation of the 85 acres in Wembley Park has been underway for over 17 years and is now not only Northwest London’s world-famous entertainment district but also a 365-day neighbourhood.

Over the past six years, Quintain - the team behind the regeneration of Wembley Park - has been working with Dixon Jones Architects, Gross Max Landscape Architects, Tony Kirkham and other expert advisors to deliver an “Avenue of Champion Trees of the World” lining Olympic Way (colloquially known to thousands of visitors as “Wembley Way”).

Completed in June 2021 ahead of the UEFA Euro 2020 (sic) championships, Olympic Way has been transformed into a promenade designed to fully complement the magnificence of the world-famous national stadium and provide an attractive and convenient thoroughfare to Wembley Park.

As part of this transformation, a site-wide tree planting strategy - in place at Wembley Park since 2005 - has allowed for the planting of 24 matched pairs of trees along Olympic Way, of varying species selected from the temperate zones around the world. The new trees also benefit from a system of specialist tree pit planting designs which provide the environment for them to thrive.

The strategy, which won the Trees and Development Award at the 2017 London Tree and Woodland Awards, includes the planting so far of over 1000 trees across the neighbourhood, all of which are recorded on the curio-xyz tree mapping app.