Winter 2018: What's currently happening at the Waterways?

Great Yarmouth Borough Council is working closely with Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust and the community on a flagship £2.7m project to restore the Grade II-listed Venetian Waterways on the seafront, including the Boating Lake.

The three-year restoration project will involve much-needed repairs to the structures of the bridges, rusticated thatched shelters and the Waterways and Boating Lake themselves. In addition, the original beautiful and bold planting scheme, dating from 1928, will be restored with the help of volunteers.  

Ahead of the start of restoration works to the gardens, GYB Services Ltd, the borough council's operational partner, is currently preparing the site by removing much of the existing planting, which is not in keeping with the original scheme.

The willow and some of the trees will remain, as well as the euonymus hedges which are survivors from the original scheme. This work needs to be completed now, before the start of the bird-nesting season. Removed plants will be reused, where possible, at other green spaces in the borough.

The project is supported with a £1.7m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund/Big Lottery Fund Parks for People Programme, plus further support from New Anglia LEP and the Department for Communities and Local Government. The important preparatory is well underway, with contractors expected to start on-site landscaping and engineering works this spring.

To find out about volunteering opportunities, please click here.