Eastcote Town Centre Rain Gardens

Project Centre designed a series of 15 rain gardens to capture and treat stormwater at Eastcote Town Centre, an area where residents and businesses have suffered from frequent surface water flooding. As part of the wider Eastcote Town Centre Improvements for the London Borough of Hillingdon, the overall aim was to deliver a multifunctional scheme which would inject new life into a neglected public space and boost footfall at a time when high streets are struggling, whilst providing flood protection.

Eastcote Town Centre is vulnerable to surface water flooding due to its topography and has a history of frequent flooding during typical rainfall events. The town centre had also come to prominence following the tragic murder of a young resident in October 2015 and the scheme has helped to address negative perceptions and reposition Eastcote as a family friendly high street.

Instead of relying on traditional hard engineering, Project Centre opted for a Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) approach utilising Green Infrastructure, to develop scheme that was able to deliver multiple benefits, improving the area for residents, businesses and wildlife.

Dilapidated brick planters were replaced with rain gardens planted with shrubs, herbaceous perennials, bulbs and ornamental grasses. A below-ground gravel layer was installed with capacity to hold back up to 50 cubic metres of water, freeing up space in the local sewer system which would otherwise become overwhelmed during storms. Previously, the area would flood with 18 mm of rain landing in one hour. Now, the site can accommodate up to 30 mm of rainfall, increasing local flood resilience. Instead of businesses flooding each year, this may now occur once in a decade.

As well as reducing the risk of flooding, the scheme is helping to revitalise the area, improving Eastcote Town Centre for both people and wildlife. The Council has even organised school trips during rainstorms and the rain gardens have done a superb job ' performing' in front of pupils, capturing polluted runoff from the road, then slowing down the flow of water and cleaning it by filtering runoff through soil and geotextiles below the surface.