Lost Gardens of London

Caption (Image Above): After Edward Days, Bloomsbury Square, 1787, pen and grey ink, with grey wash and watercolor. Private collection. Photo: © London Metropolitan Archives (City of London)

Our fascination with lost gardens is more than a mere pervasive wistfulness for the past or a vague longing for vanished paradise—it is often fueled by our interest in reconstructing worlds that supply us with a powerful means of making sense of the past, and a way of reading history. London gardens, often shut off from the continuum of everyday life around them, and so allowing particular scope for individual experimentation, readily encapsulated attitudes to the design and use of open spaces that now often seem eccentric and improbable.

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan’s talk will focus on and celebrate the evanescence of the metropolis’s vast and varied garden legacy, ranging from the capital’s humble allotments and defunct squares to amateur botanical gardens, princely pleasure grounds, artists’ gardens and private menageries— gardens that have either vanished or changed beyond recognition. “Lost Gardens” will seek to remind us of what a precious asset gardened greenspace is, and how it has contributed over the centuries to the quality of life and well-being of generations of inhabitants of the Metropolis.

About the Speaker



TODD LONGSTAFFE-GOWAN is a landscape architect and historian. He is Gardens Adviser to Historic Royal Palaces (with responsibilities at five Royal Palaces in Greater London), President of the London Gardens Trust, and lecturer at New York University (London). He is the author of several books including The Gardens and Parks at Hampton Court Palace (2005), The London Square (2012), English Garden Eccentrics (2022), and Lost Gardens of London (2024).