Regent's Park

Regent's Park by night, view from my window. Unfortunately, the day shot didn't work.

REGENT'S PARK = MY GARDEN

I am fortunate enough to have lived literally right next to Regent's Park since September 2010 so naturally I have spent quite a lot of time there. I almost feel like part of it is mine alone. 


Sometimes I go there to have my morning coffee or lunch by the pond - just because I can! And the inevitable 'squirrels attack' follows. I have yet to actually feed them. They are so unnaturally tame that they scare me but I'm probably the only person in all of London who doesn't find it endearing.    

Obviously a v. tame grey squirrel

I mainly get excited about the British squirrels because they are grey and exotic compared to their red cousins in Denmark... 

A duck in the Boating Lake in Regent's Park

There is a small coffee and ice cream shop right by the playground close to the York Gate Entrance. It's called the Cow and The Coffee Bean and is just one of many places you can have snacks or drinks while at the park, but if I were you I would make my own sandwiches or buy them (+ coffee) from Pret A Manger near Great Portland Street Tube Station or on Marylebone High Street. 

QUEEN MARY'S GARDEN

My favorite part of Regent's Park is the Queen Mary Rose Garden in the park's Inner Cirlcle. It's true that for a good part of the year it doesn't really seem like much but when the roses are in bloom it is the most beautiful and fragrant place in the whole park. 

The gates to Queen Mary's Gardens, http://canadian-turtle.livejournal.com/281126.html

Visits to Queen Mary's Gardens were a must for me during several family vacations in London when I was younger and one definitely on the to-do-list again when my family comes to see me in May.

The red roses could be Ingrid Bergmans, but then that is just one out of hundreds of possibilities... www.wikipedia.org

As you might have guessed from my previous posts I'm no expert on plants... maybe that's also why I become overly fascinated by the glamourous and sometimes just plain odd names given to different rose species. Whenever I pass 'Ingrid Bergman', 'A Shropshire Lad' or 'Moonstruck' I can't help imagining some intricate backstory to each name... 

REGENT'S CANAL AND LONDON ZOO

On the northern edge of Regen't Park flows the Regent's Canal, running through the London Zoo on its way to the Limehouse Basin Lock in East London where the canal joins the River Thames.

There are three possible boat trips on the Regent's Canal between Camden Lock and the canal area Little Venice in Maida Vale. Check the 'about'-section to find out more. 


The canal tour I want to take makes a stop at London Zoo before going to Paddington and Little Venice.  

FIND OUT ABOUT...

Closest Tube: Regent's Park, Great Portland Street and Baker Street


Regent's Park is open from 5 am all year round. Check the website for exact closing times as they vary according to season. 

Regent's Park


Regent's Canal


London Zoo

Kensington Gardens & Kensington Palace

Kensington Palace, http://benbloomfield.wordpress.com/


A LONDON CLASSIC

Granted; Kensington Gardens is hardly a secret, but it seemed like a good choice especially considering my first visit was in February and I needed a park that had a fabulous indoor attraction in case the weather was bad. Kensington Palace seemed like a great 'Plan B' 

It turned out that I would need that indoor alternative but first I wandered up the Boardwalk, tempted to rent a Barclay’s bike at one of the park gates and take a pleasant, not to mention safe ride on the smooth pathways.


Others had obviously had the same idea and despite the grey and windy conditions joggers, dog-walkers and the rest of the usual park crowd were out and about.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/5262214253/

It is no surprise that these beautiful, landscaped grounds, which used to be private gardens for the royals at Kensington Palace, are still drawing people in and has been since they were first opened to the public during the reign of George II in the 17th century. Together with Hyde Park and St. James’s Park, Kensington Gardens form a great ‘green lung’ in central London.

Sky Mirror, 2006 in Kensington Gardens, http://www.zimbio.com

ANISH KAPOOR AT THE SERPENTINE GALLERY

I didn't know about the Serpentine Gallery inside the park, but they had an outdoor Anish Kapoor exhibition on while I was there called 'Turning the World Upside Down'.


It consisted of four different sculptures set up around the Gardens, all mirroring the surroundings - turning them upside down. One of them was the above 'Sky Mirror' which stood by the Long Water where I also found the famous statue of Peter Pan. 

My personal favourite from the exhibition was the 'C-Curve', 2007:

C-Curve, 2007 in Kensington Gardens, http://speculumspectator.aurora-publishing.co.uk

A better photo of 'C-Cuve', 2007 in Brighton, 2009: 

http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/our-work/anish-kapoor-sculpture-trail/

Apparently, the Serpentine Gallery often use the gardens as an outdoor exhibition space for their many contemporary works, which makes for a great and very different art experience compared to any of the more classical museums in the Kensington area.

On a practical note, making use of the outdoors also means that you are never as crammed together as you sometimes are for indoor exhibitions. 

I should add that I have recently visited the V&A to see 'The Cult of Beauty' exhibition as well as 'Sexual Nature' at the magnificent National History Museum. Both are of course well-worth a visit, crowd or no crowd. 

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to see all of Kapoor's works. I blame the winter weather and the fact that they were quite spread out - just look at the map: 

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2010/03/anish_kapoor.html

So I went into the Enchanted Palace instead... 

http://www.hrp.org.uk/KensingtonPalace/stories/Palacehighlights/EnchantedPalaceintroduction.aspx

AN ENCHANTING PALACE

Fortunately for me the crowds had stayed at home and I had this truly amazing, theatrical installation art exhibition almost to myself. Ahh, the luxury of being able to visit museums on week days!     

My ticket

The exhibition was set up as a treasure hunt for the seven former royal residents of Kensington Palace, who each had a room dedicated to them.

Map of The Enchanted Palace

The Map came with a Dance Card, where you could note down the seven princesses:

My dance card - all empty...

SOPHIE IN WONDERLAND

The rooms all had huge installation pieces that were often both beautiful and scary - many reflecting the fact that often the life of queens and princesses were lonely and difficult, even if they belonged to a pampered elite.


For example, one room was dimly lid with green and blue tones and had a giant bed like the one from 'The Princess and The Pea' surrounded by a handful of huge string-puppets. 

Room of A Sleeping Princess, www.cratycrafty.tv

In each room a poem, written for the princess in question, revealing her circumstances, were read out aloud and the installation pieces included furniture, clothes, toys and other personal effects. Often you were even allowed to touch certain parts of the art work.

William Tempest's Dress for Dreaming About Freedom, http://www.fashion-stylist.net/blog/2010/03/30/the-enchanted-palace-at-night/ 

All around the palace you could find 'Explainers' aka kind and knowledgable museum staff willing to answer questions and tell you more about Kensington Palace and the people who lived there. These 'explainers' were a great alternative to the usual audio guides, which would surely have ruined the enchanted feel and the multi-media experience of the exhibition.


I can't in any way do The Enchanted Palace justice so I have included two short interviews with core participants, which I hope will inspire you to visit Kensington Palace and experience the pieces for yourself.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Interview #1
Sue Hill from the theatre company WILDWORKS. The company specialises in place-specific theatre and helped create the exhibit:

Interview #2
The designer duo Aminaka Wilmont talk about the Dress of Tears they executed for The Room of Royal Sorrows, dedicated to Queen Mary of Modena: 

Fun fact: Note Markus Wilmont's authentic Danish accent... Lovely.  


I spent several hours enjoying every bit of the exhibit and I will gladly go back for a second visit.

TEA AT THE ORANGERY

Same goes for the exquisite and extremely white Orangery.

The Orangery, http://www.dailymail.co.uk

And from the outside in February:

Someone holding hands, on their way to the Orangery 

I know Afternoon Teas don't have to be that costly (these days they come costlier) but you only live once, so I went and had a lovely, but not spectacular, banana/walnut cake and green tea with lemon in the pale tea room to end the day in style. The Orangery also does lunch and dinner, but I didn't have room... 

It tasted much better than it looks 

FIND OUT ABOUT...

Closest Tube: High Street Kensington, Bayswater

Kensington Gardens is open the public from 6 am to nightfall.

Kensington Gardens


Kensington Palace


Serpentine Gallery


Anish Kapoor

Waterlow Park

Waterlow Park entrance

'GARDEN FOR THE GARDENLESS'

I wandered into Waterlow Park after a visit to Highgate Cemetery, which is its closest neighbour to on two sides. 


As much as I love the cemetery it can become a bit overwhelming, even gloomy, if you spend a whole day walking about between the graves so Waterlow Park with it ponds, lawns and open landscape came as a welcome change.


Waterlow might not be as spectacular but it is lovely it its own right and there were plenty of people around even if the weather was still quite cold and grey. 

The park was bequeathed to the public as garden for the gardenless in 1889 by Sir Sydney Waterlow, who also used to own Lauderdale House inside the park.

Lauderdale House with a sundial in front

Today. Lauderdale house is an arts and education centre that operates a café as well. When I stopped by they had Roxana Halls' 'Tingle-Tangle and Other Tales' on, an exhibition examining cabaret through various media: film, painting, photography, even cabaret set pieces. 


Check out her website in the 'about'-section to see examples from this cool show and learn more about the artist. 


Unfortunately, I was in a hurry on this particular day, but I'm definitely keeping an eye out for Roxana Halls in the future.

Last stanza of 'The Garden' on a bronze plaque in Waterlow Park

As I left I took a look at the sundial and discovered that there was a quote from Andrew Marvell's 'The Garden' beside it on a plague. This sent my mind wondering... it was the first poem I had to analyse as an English student at Copenhagen back in 2005. What a strange coincidence. 


The poet is thought to have lived in a cottage once within the park. It is no longer there, I looked quite extensively for it...

Ducks in the pond

I inspected the terraced garden, guarded by large stone eagles, close to Lauderdale House and walked along the middle pond, which as the name suggests, is in the centre of the park.  

Copper roof on the dome of St. Joseph's Church.

Before I left I passed the kitchen gardens in one corner of the park, but in February there was of course not much to see. Perhaps it's time for another visit soon.   

FIND OUT ABOUT...

Closest tube: Archway, Highgate


Waterlow Park is open from 7.30 until dusk.

Waterlow Park

Lauderdale House


Roxana Halls
  

Chelsea Physic Garden

Galanthus nivalis, www.wikipedia.org

A SNEAK-PEAK INTO BOTANY HEAVEN

I don't know what I was thinking visiting a garden full of perennials in February! Maybe I had a sense that this wasn't a great plan. I didn't even bring a camera because I knew the 3.5 acre medicinal garden wouldn't look anything like it does in pictures like this:

Chelsea Physic Garden in summer... , www.wikipedia.org

Chelsea Physic Garden with the House of Chelsea in the background, www.wikipedia.org

However, the Snowdrop Days at Chelsea Physic Garden, the only open weekend during winter, didn't disappoint. The visit was a strong reminder that spring is on its way, although I look forward to my second visit at the end of May when the Garden will be at its greenest.

Snowdrop, Galanthus S. Arnott, http://blog.gardenersworld.com

ON THE TRAIL

The snowdrops (Galanthus spp) didn't grow in large white carpets as when you find them in a forrest clearing but in neat little bundles like above. 


They were set along a Snowdrop Trail that allowed you to compare and contrast the many different kinds of snowdrops as you walked through the garden. 


I never knew there were more than 75 species, not all on display, but the surrounding galanthophiles (my new favourite word!) pointed it out and told me that one of my favourites among the snowdrops wasn't even a snowdrop, but 'in the same family'. I see.  


A few examples, my two favorites:

Galanthus Brenda Troyle (I wonder who she was...),  http://www.galanthus.co.uk/snowdrop/Brenda-Troyle

The snowdrop that isn't a snowdrop but a Spring Snowflake, http://www.life-rostam.de/print/auwaelder-english.htm

A BIT OF BOTANY BACKGROUND

I thought it would be interesting to join a 1-hour tour done by a volunteer from ‘Friends of the Garden' and it was. I think the garden experts around me also enjoyed it. Here are some highlights:

Chelsea Physics Garden was founded in 1672 as a training ground for apothecaries. Exotic plants and seeds were exchanged through a botanist network that still exists today and explorers such as Captain Cook and Francis Drake brought specimens to Chelsea from their many expeditions. 


Cook even took home lava stone from Iceland for the apothecaries’ rock garden, which also consists of rubble from the Tower of London.

Sir Hans Sloane in Chelsea Physics Garden, owned the garden,co-founded the British Museum and introduced hot chocolate in the U.K., www.londontown.com

Today, the garden still maintains over 5000 different species from all over the world for conservation, education and research. This impressive collection includes Britain’s largest outdoor flowering olive tree, beds of perennials and herbs as well as many poisonous plants. 

She pointed out the winter flowering clematis and the deadly nightshade that someone apparently felt the need to taste a couple of years back. They spent four days in intensive care.  

Deadly Nightshade, www.wikipedia.org

On a lighter note: The garden café with the enticing name Tangerine Dream serves breakfast, light lunch and afternoon tea and they do it well - had a really delicious salad.   

FIND OUT ABOUT...

Closest tube: Sloane Square

The Chelsea Physic Garden is open to the public from April 1 to October 31 and for the Snowdrop Days in mid-February. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays 12-5pm Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays 12-6pm.

Entrance: Adults: £7, Students and children (5-15 yrs old.) : £5 

Chelsea Physics Garden


Snowdrops

Highgate Cemetery

A MAGNIFICENT GARDEN CEMETERY

This Garden Cemetery comes in close behind its neighbour Hampstead Heath as my favourite London park. It was rightly called one of the Magnificent Seven - private cemeteries set up outside of London in the 1800s to aid the overcrowded inner-city graveyards.   

Highgate Cemetery has a special atmosphere and an atypical wilderness compared to most other city parks. In some places it almost feels as if the plants and trees are slowly creeping in over the graves, which of course were the case from sometime in the 1960s when Highgate Cemetery was abandoned.

Fortunately, Friends of Highgate Cemetery took charge over what was then a deteriorating ruin in 1975 and the charity has worked hard to restore and maintain it ever since.     

Talbot family catacomb also mentioning where the family lived in London.

THE VICTORIAN WILDERNESS

Though much work has been done and a grand landscape management plan is in progress it is still hard to imagine that this was originally meant to be as neat and manicured as Regent's Park with broad paths, open spaces and easy access to the mausoleums and graves. 

Note the obelisk, a symbol of eternal life and a reflection of the Egyptian revivail during the 19th century. 

I went on a guided tour of the older West Cemetery on a chilly Sunday morning but even so the group was fairly big and consisted of all sorts. Highgate is obviously much more popular than I realised... so come early to avoid waiting. 


These guided tours are the only way to visit the older West Cemetery while the East Cemetery is open on a normal basis.    

The guide was bubly, helpful and interesting without having to resort to stories of haunting spirits or vampires. 


The web is of course full of references to the Highgate Vampire, partly because Bram Stoker set part of Dracula in the cemetery, but apparently it's a bit of a no no to ask about this because of an incident in the 1970s where a small group actually broke into the cemetery and vandalised part of it in search of the vampire. 

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WEST CEMETERY

Fortunately, Highgate doesn't need a vampire to be interesting. The guide showed us new and old grave monuments, pointed out their elaborate symbolism and talked about the lives of the deceased as well as Victorian burial customs. She even took us inside a mausoleum.

Cannons turned up-side-down to mark the death of a millitary officer. This grave used to have a glass window in the middle so the family could always see the deceased when they visited.  

Many of graves told the visitor what profession the deceased had occupied in life like the pictures above and below. 

Other common symbols were:

• Flaming torches turned upside down to mark the end of the earthly life and the beginning of the eternal life.
  
• Greek, Egyptian and Roman columns, obelisks and urns reflecting older burial customs and a Victorian fashion imitating classical antiquity. Cremation was still illegal at this time.
  
• Sleeping angels, especially on the graves of children.

George Wombwell had one of the more curious jobs in the cemetery

Thomas Sayers was a boxer, I think you can see a pair of gloves on the top part of his grave. The sleeping dog is not a common grave monument but the symbolism is fairly obvious - who wouldn't want their faithful pet to guard their grave? 

GRAVEYARD ARCHITECTURE

These pictures show the elaborate architecture in Highgate Cemetery, another reflection of the Victorian obssession with the ancient empires in Greece, Egypt and Rome. Highgate became a very fashionable place to have your loved ones enterred and the private enterprise made so much money that it could afford these lavish structures. It was of course extra expensive to be buried inside the Egyptian Avenue or the Circle of Lebanon. 

The Egyptian Avenue, complete with lotus flowers and obelisks. It is also built to look longer than it actually is through optical deceit. 

The Circle of Lebanon, www.wikipedia.org

THE EAST CEMETERY

It is a bit much to do both the East and West Cemetery at once in my opinion so these pictures are from a visit in early autumn 2010. 

The most famous 'resident' in the East cemetery is probably Karl Marx, whose grav someone attempted to bomb twice...

The sculptor Anna Mahler, daughter of Gustav Mahler is buried in the East Cemetery as well. I really like the sculpture on her grave.

 Just a couple of snaps that shows the beautiful and very green East Cemetery: 

FIND OUT ABOUT....

Closest tube: Archway, Highgate, Tufnell Park

Highgate Cemetery is split into East and West. West can only be accessed with a guide. Opening times for both is from 10 am. on weekdays and 11 am. on weekends until 5 pm.    

Entrance: Adults £3, Students £2

Highgate Cemetery

Friends of Highgate Cemetery