Hill Garden and Pergola

The Hill Garden and Pergola is hidden away on a quiet bit of Hampstead Heath and is a gorgeous brick building with a long pergola, created by Lord Leverhulme. Apparently a lot of the soil involved in creating the gardens came from the tunnels being dug for the Northern Line at Hampstead! The gardens were first built in 1905 and developed further over the next twenty years, but then went into a decline after WW2. The Corporation of London is now responsible for the gardens and their upkeep. 

We visited the same day as Fenton House as by the time we got there the sun had come out and it was absolutely gorgeous. The gardens are lovely and we had it virtually to ourselves which was fab.

As ever, I am terrible at identifying plants so here are some lovely pictures with no plant names, haha. 

Fenton House - Gardens

At Fenton House there's a very nicely maintained walled garden (which must be so much work) and an orchard which had a bonsai exhibition (I love bonsai), and when it stopped raining we went outside to have a look around. 

The gardens are impressive and have some plants that even Lesley had never seen before, which is a rare thing as she is very very into gardening! Whereas for me, there were about four plants I had seen before, but that is because I am not very into gardening (though I can manage if I'm pointed at a patch of earth and given clear instructions). 

Lots of garden photos: 

Camley Street Natural Park

It being a bank holiday weekend I thought I'd a) try to get out and then b) try to get up to date with some of my internet stuff (most of my posting will probably be at emptylondon.tumblr.com). Luckily I chose to go out on Friday when the weather was half-decent. 

As my dad was driving to Euston to pick up my aunt, I looked for somewhere in the area to go and noticed Camley Street Natural Park on the map. Clicking on the website, I found that apparently there's an organisation called the London Wildlife Trust who run a number of sites around London (http://www.wildlondon.org.uk/). This is super exciting because now I have a list of new places to go (although I'd failed to realise they were involved with Sydenham Hill Woods, and I went there lots when I lived in Forest Hill). 

Anyway, Camley Street Natural Park is a two-acre site near King's Cross/St Pancras. It's a nice gentle walk and would be great for kids - it felt a little bit easy to me, though I compensated by going for a long walk along Regent's Canal afterwards.

I was also a little bit disappointed that I didn't get to see much in the way of birds or interesting insects, but that may well be down to the time of year. However as it was a sunny day it was very pretty surroundings for a wander. 

Inside the park there's a meadow, a large pond and a woodland walk.

You can also see part of Regent's Canal

And there's a mix of cultivated and natural plants around the park

And finally, the only insect photo I managed to get at the park

Queen's Walk Window Gardens

At the moment there are a lot more plants than usual on the Southbank. I'd be less vague but the website for Wayward Gardens is not exactly detail-heavy (I can't find any info about when this finishes, unfortunately, but given that stuff's growing I'd hope it'll be there for a while yet). 

As far as I can tell, they're an organisation that gets people to sign up to having allotments/window boxes and they're in London as part of the Southbank Festival of Neighbourhood. I managed to be there on one of the rare sunny days and got some decent pictures:

              

Website: http://www.waywardplants.org/windows