Cofton Park
Birmingham has 490 parks and open spaces (8,000 acres) and is one of the greenest cities in Europe, including six parks which have been designated country parks, with Sutton Park a National Nature Reserve and Site of Scientific Interest (SSI). There are also seven Green Flag awarded parks.
Cofton Park is 135 acres of rolling fields and trees and is situated on the slopes adjoining the Lickey Hills Country Park. It is mostly open grassland with a few football pitches. There are areas of small woodland and in the centre of the park sits the old farmhouse as it has done for around 200 years. There are also rows of oak and ash trees flourishing in straight lines where once there were the farmland boundaries of Lowhill Farm.
The land was initially acquired by Birmingham City Council in 1933 for the amount of £10,640 from trustees for William Walter Hinde, a longstanding Birmingham manufacturer. By his will, Mr Hinde bequeathed the residue of his estate “for the purchase of land…to be kept for ever as an open space for the benefit of the people of Birmingham.”
Cofton Park is also home to Birmingham Park’s Cofton nursery. The nursery provides displays of thousands of plants for bedding-out in the parks all over the City, civic occasions, the city centre floral display, Heart of England in Bloom and gardening shows such the Chelsea Flower Show and BBC Gardeners’ World Live.