Grosvenor Square reopened on Monday after its eco-makeover.
I apologise for the delay in mentioning this.
It's quite a change. Previously Grosvenor Square was mostly substandard lawn with some trees around the edge and a handful of US-focused memorials. The memorials are still there but the lawn is now much smaller and surrounded on all sides by a fresh rim of meandering walkways, flowerbeds and shady benches. It's definitely an improvement, indeed somewhere you might now linger, and all because the landowner is looking to the future.
The landowner is the Grosvenor Estate, overseer of a longstanding property portfolio with the foresight to have owned Mayfair before all the filthy rich wanted to live there. They can thus easily afford to spend £25m transforming their longstanding property into a "world-leading climate-resilient garden'. If Grosvenor Square is to survive into the 22nd century it needs to be able to cope with rising temperatures, shifting habitats and the threat of urban flooding. Hence the redesign is all about biodiversity and climate resilience, not to mention the increased availability of coffee and cheesy focaccia.
I should have visited on Monday and reported yesterday.
Instead I waited a day and the news is now stale.
They've certainly been busy over the last year and a bit, especially around the perimeter. A wiggly path now weaves round the almost-edge of the square - I counted twenty bends altogether - past substantial flowerbeds and occasional points of recreational interest. A separate elliptical path has been laid to surround a central oval lawn, thereby offering a choice of loops (or perhaps an invitation to walk round twice). The real boost appears to be in benches, great swooshing things and slatted wooden crescents, providing dozens of fresh places to sit and relax/nibble/scroll. Additionally almost all of them are in decent shade because this is future-proofing done well.
A feature of the outer paths is a series of small dead-end lawns and clearings, I'd almost call them nodules, predominantly surrounded by flowers and low bedding plants. Don't think roses or anything old-fashionedly English, these are plants which (fortunately enough) can reasonably cope with a lack of rain. They claim to have planted 70,000 new plants altogether, also 80,000 bulbs so expect a surge of colour in the spring different to the current greeny-purple. A few of the beds include wooden stepping stones, which I'm not sure are for public use, and some particularly thin necks already include unwanted desire lines where lazy visitors have stomped through anyway.
Had I been trusted media I could have visited in advance of opening.
Instead you got nothing on Monday, sorry, only this belated site visit.
The chief memorial in Grosvenor Square is to Franklin D Roosevelt, his plinth seemingly jetwashed and pristine as befits a wartime hero. The fountains to either side also now gleam and provide yet another appealing place to sit, cleverly incorporated into the whole. A more recent memorial is the pergola erected on the eastern side to remember the 67 UK victims of the September 11 attack, their names inscribed on three bronze plaques and represented by one supporting oak trunk each. Again it's not new but feels better incorporated into the whole as a result of the perimeter ring.
If refreshment is your priority then yes there's a kiosk at one end of the Wheatsheaf Building, This is a new timber-fronted oval with a green roof, because the nature drive also stretches to an unseen upper surface. The hub belongs to the London Wildlife Trust who'll be welcoming school groups round the back and anyone who wants food and drink from the counter at the front. The brief menu includes a latte for £4.50, double ice cream for £6.50 and speck, brie and truffle honey focaccia for £8.95, all of which appear affordable for the local Mayfair clientele. Should you overdo it with the kombuchas a separate woody building on the other side of the Eagle Squadron monument hosts all the requisite toilets.
Theofficialopening by the Mayor and the the Duke of Westminster was early last week.
The associated press release offered approved text and several images which I could have embraced.
My apologies for waiting to write my own words and take my own photos, all terribly late.
The redesign also includes a wetland area, for which read two small shallow ponds. At this stage in their evolution you can still see how they were created - a bit of liner with a gravel edge - but once the marginal plants grow further it'll look a lot more like a natural amphibious domain. A more impressive side effect of the overall transformation, specifically the recompaction of the soil, is that the square can absorb up to 1.4 million litres of stormwater should it ever seriously chuck it down again. Rain or shine, this transformation has its eye on enduring all potential future climates.
One benefit of a landlord with bottomless pockets is the presence of gardeners and other staff on site at all times. The litter picker from Ethos Services appeared to follow me around the site, at one point going up to a seated couple and offering to take their empty cups rather than trouble them with walking over to the bin. If you do come for a shady sitdown, don't think that every grassy compound is essentially private, or indeed quiet. Perhaps avoid sitting too near the two playground areas squished into the outer zone, these mostly for clambering, one of them diddy and the other capable of coping with a larger youthful influx.
Where I should have gone yesterday was Cockfosters for the new House of Secrets museum.
Yet again I failed to visit somewhere on day one, instead heading to an older attraction on its day two.
I'm forever behind the curve, sorry.
Apparently the project "embodies Grosvenor's belief that spaces thrive through thoughtful design, responsible land stewardship and a commitment to people and nature", but that's just corporate word salad. Instead just come and enjoy the creative upgrade next time you're in the area, because it's amazing what you can do with environmental ingenuity, 150,000 plants and three centuries of compound interest.
