There are a variety of natural habitats within the park, including mudflats and salt marsh, ponds and reed-beds, grassland and scrub, which provide a haven for wildlife.

The coastline of Gillingham has had a rich and varied past The park was established in the 1970s by Medway Council and takes in the various areas; of Motney Hill, Rainham Dock, Bloors Wharf, Horrid Hill, Sharp's Green Bay and Eastcourt Meadows.

[1] Like most of Medway, the fertile area was then a major site of hops, cherries, plums and apple orchards and wheat fields.

The chalk came from a large pit, now known as Berengrave Local Nature Reserve[2] A cement works was then established on Motney Hill island in 1912.

As the tide came back in, the barges would re-float and sail to Rainham Dock, where the mud would be mixed with chalk and fired at high temperatures to produce cement.

[7] In the 1860s, Alfred Castle used to moor his vessels in Sharp's Green Bay (see more later), to collect chalk from a nearby quarry in Twydall, before heading across the water to his two cement works on Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey.

Castle later built a wooden jetty further down the channel leading to a small peninsula in the river.

Later, to improve the speed of loading, he built a narrow gauge horse-drawn railway from the quarry to the new wooden jetty.

When the works were fully operational, Carey and Wilders employed a minimum of men who were on a shift system.

The last vessel to berth there was a barge, the "Dick Turpin", which subsequently ran aground in the estuary off Horrid Hill in 1913.

The Saxon Shore Way (long distance path) leads along the coast through the park, between Upchurch and Gillingham.

[14] Berengrave Local Nature Reserve [15] covers an area of approximately 15 hectares (37 acres).

[16] and is internationally important for wintering birds that thrive on the invertebrate-rich mudflats, including many species of waders, ducks and geese.