London’s parks and gardens have long been peaceful escapes for residents and visitors alike, but lately there’s been a revolution afoot. While the phrase “London garden” might call to mind images of carefully manicured lawns, the city’s green spaces appear to have entered their wild era.
Take Regent’s Park, where Frieze London will be held. While its famous rose garden and elegant tree-lined walkways remain well-tended, most of its 410 acres is a mix of wildlife habitats — hedgerows, scrub, grasslands and wetlands — which have been allowed to take on a more rugged look.
The Royal Parks, the charity that runs Regent’s Park and seven more of London’s most famous public parks, along with Brompton Cemetery and Victoria Tower Gardens, has been “rewilding” the 5,000 acres it manages, as a response to the global climate and biodiversity emergency. It’s part of a larger movement that is changing the landscape of green spaces across the British capital.
ImageRegent’s Park, where Frieze London takes place next week, is known for its rose garden and tree-lined walkways. But most of its 410 acres is a mix of wildlife habitats. Credit...Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesThe Tower of London, once surrounded by a barren flat lawn of a moat, now blooms with a sea of wildflowers in the summer, while the Barbican Estate, a massive residential complex next to the performing arts center of the same name, houses a wildlife garden where local residents have recorded over 300 species. Amid the glass and steel of Westminster, a small lane is now home to an organic garden.
The term rewilding was introduced decades ago, originally describing large ecological restoration projects that often included reintroducing apex predators. More recently, the phrase has been more widely applied, describing all manner of conservation projects that can be anything from small personal wildlife gardens to mega-restoration initiatives.
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