A green space
St John’s Lodge Garden, Regent’s Park, NW1
IT’S astonishing to think that in the heart of London, at the centre of one of its most-visited parks, is a secret space where you can often find yourself completely alone.
A few steps beyond the Regent’s Park Office, on the Inner Circle, you’ll find an inconspicuous gate and wisteria-wrapped pergola walk leading, as it seems, to an urn. But this is a trick of the eye—because the path actually bends, opening out onto a garden composed almost entirely of circles and curves.
It was designed in 1889 for the 3rd Marquess of Bute (then the owner of the next-door mansion) as a ‘garden fit for meditation’ —a purpose it’s still fulfilling today, with its beds filled with thick planting and plenty of spots on which to stand and stare.
Natasha Goodfellow is the author of ‘A London Floral’ and ‘A Cotswold Garden Companion’ (www.finchpublishing.co.uk)
Shop of the month
Noble Rot, 5, Trebeck Street, W1
ONCE you’ve unspooled on an oxblood banquette behind a café curtain at Noble Rot in Mayfair, a glass of grower Champagne from Thierry Fournier tickling your chin, you can close one eye and see
