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A Gardener's Notebook: The latest incarnation of my column detailing the trails and tribulations of my garden. Join the list and ask your own questions about gardening Subscribe

The family and I have been back from Europe for just over 2 weeks now and yet it all seems like a dream. It is actually 5 weeks since we first touched down at Heathrow Airport, so those memories seem even farther away. The arrival of the 15 rolls of photos from the trip, though, has helped to remind us of all the wonderful things we saw.

London Parks

My favorite part of London proved to be the grand royal parks that stretch across a major portion of the city from east to west. It is only a short walk from the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey to St. James’s Park. This lovely triangular park contains beautiful plantings, a large lake and at least one wonderful playground where Joseph spent over an hour playing with some of London’s children.

In the middle of the park runs a bridge that splits the lake into two equal parts and provides wonderful views of Buckingham Palace at one end...

...and The Admiralty at the other. If you continue across the bridge and beyond the other shore you quickly come to St. James Palace. As I mentioned in my short dispatch from London, the balance between formal and informal spaces makes the parks truly unique.

On one side you might have perfectly maintained flowerbeds and shrubs while the other side leads off through a grove of trees surrounded by tall grass. The London Plane tree, very similar to our California Sycamore provides ample shade throughout most of the parks, although they were dropping enough "fluff" from their seedpods to make it appear that it was snowing in some areas.

The Royal parks obviously have a substantial budget as they are all well maintained. You constantly see park workers attending to some task or another. Their long history as important public spaces will hopefully ensure their survival forever.

Next in line, to the north and west of St. James’s Park, Green Park stretches around the north side of Buckingham palace and continues the large expanses of trees and grass. Like all the parks it is crisscrossed with stone paths and offers only restricted access to motor vehicles and bicycles.

The final section of parkland stretching back to our temporary homestead in Kensington is Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. I walked this entire route one afternoon and while it can be done in a day it is a bit far, especially in the heat. Hyde Park is huge. Much larger that I expected from the maps I used to navigate the city. It is so large that it seems to contain everything you could want in a park. There is statuary, like the Peter Pan statue that sits alongside the Long Water (itself a part of the Serpentine). There is the gilded Albert Memorial that Queen Victoria ordered to honor her husband. There are meadows and ponds and fountains and swans 2-3 times large than my son, Joseph.

One area of the park contained long stretches of flower and shrub beds alongside a paved path with frequent benches and over-arching trees. The squirrels would scramble after you awaiting a dropped crumb or tossed treat. This seemed to be a favorite part of the park for parents with young children. We saw more than one parent walking their uniform-clad child home from school through the cool loveliness.

If you are ever in London, I highly recommend you set aside a few hours from the historical monuments and spend some time exploring the lovely public parks that, to me, are truly the heart of London.

Next week: A few words about the gardens of Paris and Rome.

Keep digging! -- Douglas

The WelchWrite Bookstore:

Here is a lovely book I came across in a local furniture/interior decoration shop. We all want to spend more time in our gardens and this book has many wonderful ideas for bringing our gardens indoors when we can’t be outdoors -- Douglas

Garden House : Bringing the Outdoors in

by Victoria Wise, Sean Sullivan (Photographer), Bonnie Trust Dahan, Bonnie Trust-Dahan

List Price: $24.95 Our Price: $17.46 You Save: $7.49 (30%)

<Info | Buy Now>