Home Park

Home Park covers an area of about 750 acres (303.5 ha). It is bordered by the formal gardens of Hampton Court Palace, a walled road between Hampton Court and Kingston Bridge, and Barge Walk running alongside a bend of the River Thames. The present outstanding features of the Park are its great avenues of lime trees radiating out from the Palace for around ¾ mile towards the east. In the central of these runs the Long Water, which at its eastern end now contains the Jubilee Fountain, created in 200?. There is also a Cross Avenue perpendicular to, and at the eastern end of, the Long Water. The avenues and Long Water form a coherent geometry with the formal Palace gardens.

The Great Storm of 1987 severely damaged the tree avenues which were already in steady decline. Re-planting began in the early 1990s, with replacement of the Cross Avenue. In 2004, the Long-Water Avenue trees were replaced.

The three main buildings of historic interest in the Park are Stud House and The Pavilion, which are private residences, and the Ice House near Hampton Wick gate, which is also not open to the public. Large areas of land on the eastern side of the Park, some prone to flooding, and mainly used for grazing and paddocks, are also inaccessible to the public. A golf course occupies a large area in the south of the Park, but is not physically enclosed and merges with the Park. Apart from the formal Long Water, there are various other areas of water, most notable the Hampton Wick Pond, Oak and Rick ponds, the latter used for model boats.

The Park has a herd of around 300 fallow deer. These are important in maintaining the Park's grasslands, including one of its key ecological features, acid grassland.

Each summer, around 24 acres of the Park are occupied by the Hampton Court Flower Show.