London || Open Garden Squares
When a friend of mine bailed on a day out in London, I was a bit lost with what to do on my own. I’d already booked my train tickets and had a party to attend on Saturday evening, yet it was practically the other end of the central line and nearly an hour from the centre of the city so didn’t fancy the trek out too early. Cue a completely random chat with Adam’s best friend Sam and we discovered we were both in the same predicament – his friend had also bailed and the lovely day out in visiting the Open Garden Squares in London he’d planned would now be going solo.
Naturally I jumped on that bandwagon bought my £12 ticket and spent my entire trip up to London overestimating how much time we’d have, how quick it is to navigate different areas and ultimately how many gardens we could visit.
The Open Garden Squares is held on one weekend across London every year and is an event which includes hundreds of different gardens under the cost of just one ticket. The gardens themselves vary from the very bizarre art installations, the very hippy community allotments to the very formal regency gated parks. All bases are covered and we’d both decided we wanted some weird ones you’d not necessarily see at any other point. I’d planned 15 gardens in about 5 locations across 6 hours that we had.
I was so wrong.
We only managed to find five.
Total.
Five gardens of completely different varieties and a whole great tour of the coolest bits London has to offer.
I was keen to see rooftop gardens and barges and quirky art, but sadly there is just simply not enough time in the day to get around them all, and the ones we did end up seeing were pretty cool regardless.
We started in Knightsbridge, because who bloody well wouldn’t want to see how the other half live in London dahhhhhling. Here we wandered through Cadogan (which, other than Sam trying to take awkward photos of a statues, ahem, package, was a bit dull) and then headed to Rococo’s chocolate shop where they grow their own ingredients out the back for use in their rather strange and beautiful flavour variations. Chatting to a vivacious old lady who gave me samples of some basil and lime chocolate, and salt, rosemary and almond chocolate, surrounded by tiles, mirrors and plants in a tiny little courtyard was an experience.
Flying back underground we headed to the most anticipated gardens of the day – the London Skip Garden at King’s Cross and the Almara Permaculture Garden not far from there.
Fuelling our rumbling tummies with courgette chocolate cake and flat whites, we were amazed by the vegan café that is fed by a literal skip garden and other dotted reclaimed greenhouses. The toilets were especially great – though I expected compost loos, they were built immaculately and everything about the skip garden was quirky and creatively designed.
As a contrast, the Alara permaculture garden was so different. Wedged in a thin strip between a busy rail line and a business estate filled with warehouses, the owner has fully stocked the soil with so many amazing plants producing all the fruit and vegetables you can imagine, including some you wouldn’t expect in your quintessential English garden. With a poet in residence and free muesli, what’s not to love?!
Discovered along the Regent’s Canal, it was tucked away close to the beautiful round mirror installation. Turns out taking posed blog photos is quite the skill to obtain, one which Sam and I are yet to master – hence a LOT of laughter when looking back over the photos.
We also headed out to the Geffrye museum, which I had added to my list of places to visit since reading Amanda’s review on Rhyme and Ribbons. Spotting Bill Oddie, smelling the amazing scents throughout each section of gardens through the ages and wondering through the flowers. Cut short by a lack of time, we were starving and set off through Shoreditch and Brick Lane to find some smoked salmon and cream cheese, and salted beef and mustard bagels.
We went our separate ways shortly after and I jumped on the tube alllllll the way to South Woodford ready for a ‘house cooling’ party with my old housemates as they prepared to move out of London. They’d decorated amazingly, and I spent the evening mostly around the fire pit, eating BBQ, drinking homemade fruit punch and toasting marshmallows.
Music, people, fire and drinks flowing, I knew I had to get up at 7am for my tube to get me back to Paddington, so it was a bit worrying when I looked at my watch and time had flown to 2.30am. Even more so because the next time I looked, it was 4.15am. Somehow those 3 hours sleep squashed into a double with two of my old housemates flew by and I got up to blearily start out on the longest walk of shame, in last nights clothes and still feeling pretty drunk.
The class of it all for a spectacular end, but for a mere 22 hours in London, it was so worth it.