A Secret Garden in the Middle of Regent's Park in London - Gardenista
Photographs by Kendra Wilson. Usually secrets don’t stay secret for very long. Early one evening, I headed for the Inner Circle in Regent’s Park, took a right at the Rose Garden, and followed the road as it curved past the Park Office. Like a country house park in the middle of town, the garden is overlooked by a large Regency villa. Our business, however, is the garden, which has been open to the public since 1928. For 40 years before that it was a designed garden, intended by its owner, the Marquess of Bute, as a place for “quiet contemplation.” Part of its secret charm may lie in the fact that it was a neglected corner for many years after becoming public. It is still a place of quiet contemplation, partly because no one is around. sets it apart from the other Royal Parks. Pleached limes are used to enclose two smaller, even quieter gardens, satellites to the main pond area. The soil is richer and darker, and the plantings are not intended to withstand the hurly-burly of the general public. A rustic arbor among the pleaching. Some very informal cow parsley stands waist high. Similar urns are much in evidence around the avenues of Regent’s Park, but here in the secret garden they are put together in a different way. Cardoons and delphiniums prepare to surge outward and upward in the formal borders. The lupines are also ready to go. Woven willow structures, long associated with yurts and festivals, are now part of the vernacular of grand gardens. White violets, hostas, and euphorbia enjoy the moisture of an English dusk. Free glamor for those who seek it, in London NW1.