Coy Pond Gardens marks the point where Bournemouth's Pleasure Gardens peter out towards Westbourne and Branksome and the River Bourne widens into a still ornamental pond edged with willows and shrubs. It's a small, unhurried pocket of the valley, somewhere locals stroll to rather than visitors hunt down, with benches from which to watch the carp and ducks drift past.
Background
The pond dates from Victorian times and its name is a corruption of "decoy": it was originally a decoy pond, built to draw in wildfowl. The gardens around it arrived later. In the early 1930s the landscaped walk along the full length of the River Bourne valley from Bournemouth's Pleasure Gardens, first set out in the 1840s on the advice of the architect Decimus Burton, was pushed north-west to include the pond, and Coy Pond Gardens took shape on what had been allotments.
Pond and rockery
The pond is irregular in outline, with an island in the middle and resident ducks and carp; a gravel path loops round the water and steps connect it to the gardens below. Climbing the slope from Coy Pond Road is the feature the site is best known for, a rockery roughly 550ft in length, terraced into the hillside and replanted late in the twentieth century. Locals favour it as a short walk for some green calm away from the busy seafront.
Practical details
The gardens are free, open access and have no fixed hours. Street parking nearby costs nothing, and dogs are allowed everywhere. Upkeep is shared between BCP Council and the volunteer-run Friends of Coy Pond, formed in 1998 and still responsible for much of the planting and maintenance.
It makes a tranquil pause on a longer walk down the Bourne valley towards the central Pleasure Gardens, and the shops and cafés of Westbourne are close at hand. Our guide to things to do in Bournemouth has more on the wider area.