Once we arrived in Heathrow, we seemed to walk for hours through a series of long airport corridors, but passport control was quick and automated, and we were soon heading toward the airport’s tube station. We were pleasantly surprised to discover we both had £7 on our old Oyster cards, and once we had topped them off with an additional £20, we were ready to board the Piccadilly line. Arriving in central London, we exited the tube at Russell Square, walked a half-mile to our hotel, and left our luggage in a small storage area. We then had four hours to kill before we could check in at 3:00 p.m. Since a primary purpose of this trip was to visit gardens, we decided it made sense to visit gardens within walking distance of our hotel. We were about a mile from St. Paul’s Cathedral, and we knew there were several small gardens near the Cathedral that we had never visited. St. Paul’s seemed a natural destination. Alas, this is when we realized that we had left at home our London A-Z, an invaluable guide for navigating London streets. Fortunately, we did have a couple simple website maps printed before our departure, and we began our trek reasonably certain we could find one of London’s most notable landmarks. Of course, it didn’t help that we were trying to operate with only a few, erratic snippets of sleep.
While walking on Gray’s Inn Road, we stumbled upon Calthorpe Community Garden. It was not on our list of options, but on these trips, the accidental discoveries are often the most rewarding, and we were lucky that we had arrived on a day when the garden is open to all visitors. On Mondays-Wednesdays access is limited to individuals the garden describes as “vulnerable.” During our stroll through the garden, we found a coffee shop with a green roof and outdoor seating, a small store selling seeds and soaps, a series of raised flower and herb beds, an enormous composter, an enormous rosemary, many well-placed benches for visitors, and an attractive plant stand with flowers in small pots for sale (an idea that struck me as a possibility for the Coe garden). In one bed was a handwritten sign proclaiming the need for pollinators. The garden is now celebrating their 30th year, a notable tribute to the determination and diligence of the garden's volunteer staff.
The slideshow represents several other small gardens we discovered during our four-hour walk to and from St. Paul’s: Festival Garden, Christchurch Greyfriars Church Garden, Cleary Garden, Gray’s Inn Garden, and Distaff Lane Garden.