Colour among the gravestones
At first sight, London’s urban jungle may not seem like the ideal place to celebrate the history of gardening. Nevertheless, carefully tended front gardens in the suburbs, densely planted window boxes in the inner city and the flower beds in public parks keep the city in bloom from early spring to late autumn. In and around the church of St Mary-at-Lambeth, different faces of the English garden tradition are on view.
There was a good reason to set up the Museum of Garden History in this deconsecrated church, which was in such a ruinous condition in the early 1970s that it was almost demolished. In the churchyard is the tomb of two pioneering plant hunters and gardeners, John Tradescant the Elder (1570–1638) and the Younger (1608–62), both of them intrepid travellers. Around their grave grow plants that they introduced to Europe such as the scarlet runner bean and tulip tree. The garden behind the church belongs to the museum, but it is not necessary to pay the entrance fee in order to admire the colourful wild flower garden at the front, where a luxuriant growth of grasses and wild flowers among old graves creates a mood of morbid decay mixed with the freshness of spring. In April, forget-me-nots and cranesbill flower, followed by foxgloves, marguerites, marigolds and campions. In June, poppies bloom in many colours, and in late summer, hollyhocks rise above the gravestones. Two notable persons are buried here: Elias Ashmole, founder of the world’s first university museum in Oxford, and Captain Bligh of The Bounty.
Info
Address Lambeth Palace Road, SE1 7LB | Public Transport Westminster (Circle, District, Jubilee Line) | Hours The Museum of Garden History reopens after refurbishment in early 2017; see www.gardenmuseum.org.uk| Tip A few paces away is Lambeth Palace, the London seat of the archbishops of Canterbury. For tours of the palace, see www.ticketmaster.co.uk. For exhibitions in the historic library there, see www.lambethpalacelibrary.org.
An untended patch of land just outside the churchyard also takes up the theme of nature in the city. A fountain is surrounded by mosaic pictures of motifs chosen by local children: a hedgehog, a fox, a peach and a butterfly.
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