Park life then and now: Can you help Historic England's modern day project with a picture of Bedford Park?

What an amazing picture of our historic and beautiful Bedford Park.

Historic England has dug this out from its archives – which includes historic public park postcards from the Nigel Temple Collection – to celebrate 40 years of protecting historic parks and gardens all over the country.

And it wants you to help update its park life perspective with a contemporary view of this historic landscape.

Called the Missing Pieces Project, you can add your unique picture which Historic England hopes will help add a new perspective to our historic parks.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO

Find a location near you on the map

Click on the location marker to find a link to the Parks and Gardens Register entry, including a postcard from the Nigel Temple Collection

Take a photo of the same view the next time you visit

Upload it to the Missing Pieces Project and add your unique piece of the picture

Rachel Prothero, Historic England head of content, said: “The Nigel Temple Collection of postcards gives us a wonderful snapshot of a moment past in some of the beautiful parks and gardens to be found across the country. We’d love for people to add their photographs of the same locations so we can see how these cherished landscapes look today and add to their story.”

Nigel Temple was an artist, postcard collector, antiquarian and an authority on garden design. He contributed to a number of journals on architecture, archaeology and garden history and was registrar of research for the Garden History Society (now known as The Gardens Trust). His large collection of postcards is a unique and special archive.