It's two acres of royal tribute on the site of some former glasshouses. It looks both to the past and to the future. It's very nicely done if not yet at its finest. And if you turned up early enough yesterday they gave you a free souvenir booklet to tell you what you were looking at. I shall be quoting from it during what follows using regal purple text, just so you don't think I wrote those bits.
On Day 1 a queue formed outside and only one entrance was unlocked, but the long term intention is that all four gates will be open and anyone can wander through, just like any other corner of the park. This is where all the shrubs for the Royal Parks used to be grown until the nursery moved to Hyde Park in 2018. This left a brownfield site with considerable potential so a plan was hatched to create an amazing garden to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. But following her death it became a horticultural tribute instead, a garden of colour and contemplation, of biodiversity and beauty, of memory and hope. In short some swirly paths, a few water features and a lot of nice plants.
The chief focus near the main point of entry is a generous circular pond which creates a tranquil setting with contemplative and reflective qualities. It's deep enough to float the stems of several water plants and shallow enough to see the pebbly bottom, also protruded into by a stumpy rectangular jetty. This is just one of the garden's carefully distributed features that provide punctuation points of interest and character or 'moments of delight', as the horticulturalspeak has it.
Another moment of delight is the long metal lattice on the landward side, this a striking pergola which frames the terrace. Take a seat on one of several benches and you can see where the climbing plants haven't yet made much of an assault in an upward direction. The pergola is made from several of the struts from the original greenhouses on this site, thus it embodies the garden's circular economy principles. It also has 56 struts, one for each of the countries in the Commonwealth, although as far as I'm aware there are no plans to remove one every time an existing member secedes.
Your eye will likely then be drawn by a tall brick structure, this a water tower retained as a nod to the site's working past and repurposed to create a landmark. It has a splendidly ornate whorl of blacksmithery on top, the fronds representing plants symbolic of the four home nations, also a small silhouetted corgi if you look really carefully. As the garden's highest viewpoint it offers a small raised balcony ideal for gaining a wider overview, this accessed via a teensy passageway likely clogged by white-haired visitors queueing for their own look. Five nestboxes await the arrival of mating swifts, a hi-tec gizmo broadcasting bird sounds at dawn and dusk in the hope of luring them in.
It's early days for the flowers but they do already look semi-spectacular, especially the alliums and the large floppy tulips. Species the Queen is known to have liked take centre stage, especially anything found in her wedding bouquet or funeral wreath like rosemary or myrtle. The agapanthus came from Windsor Great Park, their striking blue flowers a direct connection to her private estate... or will be when blooming season begins. A scant few daffodils can be seen dying out around the main pond, a bit of a waste because their yellow trumpets peaked long before the garden opened, but publication deadlines do at least mean they take pride of place in all the publicity shots.
If you're expecting normal soil no, everything appears to be planted in a pebbly sand. That's because it's three-quarters concrete from the former glasshouse site, all ground up in a sustainable manner, indeed you could say turning grey to green. Don't expect lawns either, indeed the gardens have a strict 'no picnics' rule because there's loads of grass elsewhere in the park for that. What they've really gone for here is a scheme that pushes the boundaries of sustainable gardening in an attempt to climate-proof the site. There's almost a Mediterranean feel rather than lush planting, all the better to commemorate the Elizabethan Age in a considerably drier future.
If you're wondering about the pattern made by the paths these supposedly reflect the Queen's personality. The central promenade reflects her unwavering sense of duty and service, because of course it does, bisected by a meandering path symbolising her long and remarkable personal journey. There are certainly plenty of peripheral paths to follow, from broad meadowlike strolls to cooler wiggles through the woodland fringe. One end of the main spine ends at a roundel offering a moment of quiet reflection, i.e. there are a heck of a lot of benches, also a looping inspirational quote uttered by Her Maj in a random Christmas Broadcast. This is where the mega tulips are, also a magnolia that looked magnificent a few weeks ago but has alas now shot its load.
The garden gets a tad less formal and more meadowy the further north you go, with occasional specimen trees that provide structure and punctuation. Here the ponds are more like gravel scrapes, the long grass less floral and the resilient planting occasionally brushed by an arcing sprinkler. The project boasts that it's 184% more biodiverse than the glasshouses that were here before, a fact it can't possibly know for sure at this stage. But I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because while I was rounding the rear corner a tiny newt scuttled out across the path and its appearance fair bowled me over. I lost it a few seconds later somewhere in the swale but how great to know that not everything you read in purple prose is greenwash.
If you do come to see the new garden don't forget to visit the Park's older more established gardens because at this time of year they're gorgeous. Just round the back is the St John's Lodge Garden, a meditative enclosure entered down a wisteria tunnel currently at its peak, whose manicured sculptural beauty I'd somehow never stumbled upon before. But the real treat is Queen Mary's Garden, this eight times larger than Queen Elizabeth's, a circular rose garden par excellence complete with fountains, waterfalls and thorny beds that peak in June. The joy of Regent's Park is that it has so many distinct landscapes, so how great to have another one.
The Queen Elizabeth II Garden is certainly a welcoming, fully accessible, climate-resilient space, also a garden of exceptional quality and ambition imbued with subtle symbolism that will inform the collective memory. Within this diverse habitat mosaic are a number of unique landscape settings with points of reflection and contemplation woven throughout. Take time to explore and to find quieter moments to pause and reflect, taking in many of the key moments of delight along the way. For this is truly an exemplar of how beautiful landscape design and environmental responsibility can work together to shape a garden of exceptional quality and ambition that is designed to grow more beautiful with every passing year. Her Maj would certainly be chuffed to see how the garden she approved has turned out.
