Blackley has several green spaces:
Boggart Hole Clough Boggart Hole Clough is a large woodland and urban country park. The park has a
bowling green, tennis and basketball courts, a boating lake and a children's play area. It has its own permanent
orienteering course and an athletics track. There is an old stone bridge across the brook running through the clough. The clough was designated a local nature reserve in 2008.
Blackley Forest Blackley Forest is a
Site of Biological Importance and an example of one of the country's first Community Woodlands. It was planted to commemorate the Queen's coronation and also local people killed in the
Second World War. The area has had woodland on it since the
Norman Conquest in 1066, when there were wild boar, deer and eagles. The forest is a mix of
woodland, grassland and
wetlands, with a network of paths and steps. The stretch of the
River Irk in the forest is fringed by
birch trees with some colonies of autumn
crocus.
Heaton Park Heaton Park, at around , is the biggest park in Greater Manchester, and one of the largest municipal parks in
Western Europe, providing some 25% of Manchester's total green space. It is the grounds of
Heaton Hall, a
Grade I listed, neoclassical 18th-century country mansion. The hall was remodelled to a design by
James Wyatt in 1772, and is open to the public as a museum and events venue. Although the park is officially part of the
City of Manchester, two of a number of entrances are accessed from the suburb of Blackley, on Middleton Road. ==Transport==