Well, Readers, today I took my first look at the new Queen Elizabeth II garden in Regent’s Park. It’s been described as ‘a garden of colour and contemplation, of biodiversity and beauty, of memory and hope’, and it is a very attractive place. It’s on the site of the old nurseries for the Royal Parks (now moved to Hyde Park), and it prides itself on its accessibility – it has wide, level paths, accessible toilets, and is next to the espresso bar in case you need to stop for a caffeine hit.

At the moment the alliums are in full view: because parts of the garden are still fairly bare, they look like little round purple aliens, to me at least. The bees were thoroughly enjoying them, though I managed to get not a single photo of a pollinator. Sigh.

There are various ecosystems in the garden, including a couple of boggy ponds, a proper ‘lake’ and a meadow, and a nice mix of native and non-native plants. This little lake was a particular favourite, with a blackbird taking a bath and several dragonflies zipping about.

The meadow has a good mix of grasses, for butterfly and moth caterpillars, along with flowering plants.

There are some shady areas with rather nice leave/wood piles for insects…

And a nice plaque explaining some of the planting…

There’s a pergola built from metal repurposed from the nursery buildings…

And  a fine shallow ornamental lake, with a few waterlilies and lots of water plants around the edge.

All in all, this seems like a very fine addition to the Regent’s Park gardens, with something for everybody – lots of colour for those who like more traditional gardens, lots of places for wild creatures, and lots of nice places to sit down and just contemplate the scene.

On the way out, we noticed that this tree was gradually defeating the fence next to it…

And one of the fountains in the ornamental gardens is being refurbished – the original winged lions look a little disgruntled to me, and I’m not sure if they’ve been replaced or are going back.

Incidentally, this week I came across the notion of ‘orphaned’ words, where there is a negative but no positive word. So, there is ‘disgruntled’ but no ‘gruntled’, ‘nonchalant’ but no ‘chalant’. Can you think of any more?

And do pop into the Queen Elizabeth II garden if you get a chance, I suspect it will be constantly evolving and changing as it matures.