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We’ve launched a new Blog Network that involves getting a bunch of cool bloggers to write for us, such as Flora from The Accidental Londoner. Here are Flora's favourite gardens in London.
You could pass a happy half hour reading each inscription on the benches in Mount Street Gardens, wondering who all those celebrated in this quiet corner were. Inside tourists sit poring over maps, locals walk their children to school, and workers take a peaceful lunchbreak amid the perfectly planted flowerbeds.
Once upon a time, an Islington school teacher had a dream about a derelict tangle of wasteland, reimagining it as much needed community green space in one of the densest boroughs of the city. Since 1982 the Culpeper Community Garden has provided space to relax, picnic, or tend a small plot if you’re a local resident without a garden of your own.
© Gardenvisit.com
Plenty lies beneath the surface of the tiny Phoenix Garden, which rests on the grounds of a twelfth century leprosy hospital. From its benches, carved with hymns to the humble earthworm to its tadpole-filled pond, the Phoenix Garden is where I go to escape the busy crowds of shoppers and tourists that fill nearby Soho and Covent Garden.
4. The Cloister Garden at the Museum of the Order of St John
This walled garden is a personal favourite of mine when I need a quiet retreat during a busy day at work. Part of the Museum of the Order of St John, the garden is surrounded by a series of fine cloisters, so even if it’s pouring with rain you can enjoy its flowers without getting soggy.
© Carl Court
In the play ‘Closer’ (later made into a film starring Jude Law and Natalie Portman), a girl named Alice Ayres meets a man who falls hopelessly in love with her. Only after she dies tragically does the man discover that Alice Ayres was a name appropriated by the girl from a memorial in a London park. Postman's Park is the real-life home of the Watts’s Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice. Go and look carefully and you will find the name that inspired the play's tragic protagonist.
Share your love for London by nominating your favourite spots in the Time Out London Awards.