Best Parks in London Ontario
London is located at the heart of southwestern Ontario. As Canada’s 10th-largest city, it serves as a regional hub for surrounding communities. This city offers low crime rates, excellent education and health care facilities, culture, and beautiful parks. London is also known as a “Forest City” cause of its natural beauty, trees, and green sceneries that you’ll find.
Outdoor spaces and nature can be your outlet to have fun with your loved ones, exercise, meditate, or take a relaxing walk. Our selection of the best parks in London includes everything from parks to go on a hike, parks with relaxing scenery, to parks with playgrounds.
Springbank Park
This family-friendly Park is located alongside the shores of the winding Thames River. It is over 300 acres in size with over 23 miles of easy use and access trails. This Park is a great place for all summer and winter outdoor activities. It allows you to see different types of birds (specifically along the shores of the Thames River), like geese, American Goldfinch, Blue Jays, and Chickadees, among others.
This well-forested Park provides excellent shade during the hot summer days, making it a popular and perfect place for a relaxing stroll with your dog. And in winter, it features an outdoor 250-meter skating trail.
Inside Springbank Park, you can find the famous Storybook Gardens. Built-in 1958, it is a cherished favorite family destination; this space is an enchanted storybook environment for young children, themed around storybooks and fairy tales.
Victoria Park
Victoria Park is located in downtown London. This 62,500 square meters landscaped park is one of the city’s most celebrated designed landscapes from the 19th century. Over time, this Park has been utilized as a pleasure ground, a recreational facility, and a civic space for special events.
Originally a site used by the British Military between 1838 and 1869, it has become a civic park. It has significant historical, archaeological resources, and potential archaeological resources. Being situated on an isolated artifact find, mixed with the natural topography, and the proximity to Carling Creek, the site may have once had a prehistoric aboriginal occupation.
This Park is the biggest and best preserved historic archaeological site in the City of London. Several monuments have become integral to the Park, including the Boer War Soldiers Monument, Crimean War cannons, The Cenotaph, the “Holy Roller” tank, and the Veterans Memorial Garden and Carillon, donated by the Dutch Canadian community.
Gibbons Park
With its big green sceneries, gorgeous big trees, and a unique bridge over the North Thames River, Gibbons Park is a real treasure in Central North London. This 58-acre Park has a long walking path and a path along the Thames River for cycling or rollerblading. Gibbons Park offers an ideal environment to walk, jog or bike with your loved ones. Both paved and natural trails make Gibbons Park easily accessible for all. It is also pet-friendly, and some open fields in the Park allow dogs to be off-leash.
Gibbons Park offers a lot of recreational spaces like -three- tennis courts and a heated outdoor swimming pool. The splash pad and playground area are highly appreciated by the kids that visit. With a field house, picnic shelters, and picnic tables for large get-togethers with family and friends, who wouldn’t want to visit?
You can gaze out onto the river, where you’ll see ducks, geese, and maybe even a deer. If you bring binoculars, you might spot some resident birds in this Park, like Baltimore Oriole, Mallards, Pine Warbler, Swallows, Great Horned Owls, and maybe the Great Blue Herron and Osprey. The bridge over the North Thames River is a popular spot for photographers with scenic views and entertaining ducklings.
Sifton Bog
This 41.6-hectare Park is located on the south side of Oxford Street. Sifton Bog is home to uncommon butterflies, like the Bog Copper and the Bog Elfin. Many bright-colored dragonflies and damselflies can be seen around the pond in summer.
Sifton Bog’s main feature is the floating acid peat bog and associated boreal plant life. This place is home to some rare species, including a few carnivorous plants. There are various trails in this Park, Most tracks are easy to walk, but there are a couple of short hills. The managed trails are marked with yellow blazes.
You can find a great variety of fauna, but it depends on the season of the year you’re visiting. Different types of birds stop over during spring and fall migration. Sometimes, the Black Spruce and Tamarack cones attract the winter finches. Green Frogs and Grey Treefrogs are often heard in the spring. Midland Painted Turtle Frequently Redmond’s Pond.
Raccoons, Grey squirrels, Eastern chipmunks, and other mammals typical of urban natural areas can be found in drier habitats all year- round.
Westminster Ponds
The Westminster Ponds complex is one of London’s most significant Natural Areas. It is 300 hectares big and has six main pounds and some smaller ones throughout the area. This Park made it into the list because it has a wide variety of natural habitats in a relatively tranquil place and is considered a Class 1 provincially significant wetland.
This complex offers beautiful views of its scenic ponds. Views are notably better during fall when the red leaves of the maple trees and the yellow needles of Tamaracks reflect in the ponds. The main trail leads from the Tourist Information Center to a boardwalk, which marks the start of the Spettigues Pond Loop.
There are a lot of minor and unofficial trails that are not marked on the map, so make sure you go for the most used route and make good use of the map. You may need to explore several times so you’ll become familiar with the areas. Managed trails are marked in yellow blazes.