The Queen Elizabeth II Garden

The garden is the latest addition to the series of historic landscapes within The Regent’s Park. Our design sits in harmony with Nash’s Grade I landscape. It draws inspiration from the park’s distinct geometry, incorporating promenades, circuses and water whilst also responding to 21^st century imperatives – the need for climate adaptation, to support biodiversity and sustainability manage water. The two-acre former store yard is now open to the public for the first time in over 100 years. While this new space sits in harmony with the park’s traditional landscape, it responds to our changing climate by being highly adaptable and resilient.

Framed by mature hornbeams and a woodland fringe, the garden transitions from a grand, structured terrace into tranquil meadows and flowing parkland. The arrival space is anchored by a circular pond and a reimagined water tower, which serves as a modern folly. From here, a terrazzo path meanders through immersive, colourful planting, bisected by a formal promenade that pays homage to The Regent’s Park’s classic geometry. This path culminates in a grand roundel, while intimate gravel paths invite visitors to explore quieter pockets of the site.

Existing woodland buffers have been enhanced with native understory planting, and a new western coppice softens views of the service yard. We carefully sculpted the landform to reuse site materials, creating diverse microclimates and gentle undulations. By burying the water tower’s basement, we created a prominent hill that offers elevated views, accessible via both stepped and winding paths.

The new garden honours the life, service, and legacy of Queen Elizabeth II, celebrating her lifelong commitment to nature and conservation. From its structure through to the choice of plants and ornamentation, the garden is imbued with subtle references to the late Queen.

In developing the garden, we took time to visit some of Her Majesty’s favourite gardens, drawing inspiration from places that were personal to her. We wanted to create a tribute that feels reflective of the late Queen’s reign.

The meadows at Frogmore House instilled a sense of beauty and calm that we sought to echo. A secluded woodland path in Buckingham Palace Gardens, which she particularly enjoyed, inspired a sheltered walk through the garden’s wooded fringe, where visitors can experience dappled shade and the relative quiet offered by this different perspective. We also took inspiration from the dry garden and borders at The Savill Garden during visits to Windsor Great Park.

The Path of Service

A formal path cuts through the centre of the garden from the circular pond to the roundel at the garden’s heart. This axis symbolises the late Queen’s commitment to service and her unwavering duty. The route is tapered, gently rising and narrowing towards the roundel to create a play on perspective and increased sense of drama. This device was inspired by our restoration of Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe’s Water Gardens in Hemel Hempstead.

The Path of Life

In direct contrast, a gentle meandering path leads visitors through the gardens at a more leisurely pace, reflecting the changes and chapters of the late Queen’s personal life.

The Cut Through

A cut-through formed by large Yorkstone blocks, split using a traditional stitch drill, symbolises the intersection between duty and personal life, and Queen Elizabeth’s II enduring strength as a monarch.

The Roundel

The roundel forms the heart of the garden and a tranquil place to pause within London’s busy city centre. A circular bench surrounds the roundel, gently framing the space in a protective embrace. The roundel’s focal point is a magnolia tree (Magnolia salicifolia ‘Wada’s Memory’), chosen to flower around Elizabeth II’s birthday. It is encircled with a quotation from the late Queen:

“We all need to get the balance right between action and reflection. With so many distractions, it is easy to forget to pause and take stock.” Queen Elizabeth II’s 2013 Christmas broadcast.

The Tower Metalwork

Decorative metalwork wraps around the re-imagined former water tower. It features decorative metalwork designed in collaboration with Ian Thackray, a traditional blacksmith and alumnus of The King’s Foundation. The metalwork symbolises the four home nations through motifs of thistle, leek, shamrock, and rose, as embroidered on the late Queen’s coronation gown, each individually forged by an artisan blacksmith from their respective nation.

The Pergola

The garden honours the Commonwealth through both planting and architectural structure. Each of the 14 pergola posts comprises four uprights. In total, there are 56 uprights, representing the 56 member countries of the Commonwealth. The structure’s upward reach, supporting growth and life, symbolises the unity and strength of the Commonwealth.

The planting design was led by horticulturalist Dr Noel Kingsbury in close collaboration with our team. Noel’s approach centres on creating resilient, naturalistic plant communities through intermingling species.

Stepping into the garden, visitors are greeted by planting on a grand scale. The centre is a mix of massed perennials, ornamental grasses and low woody shrubs. Tailored to the recycled aggregate growing mediums, it is forward looking and resilient to climate change.

Shrubs and trees provide architectural character, focal points, winter structure and flower throughout the seasons. A series of low points and gentle swales collect and attenuate water, providing conditions for a ribbon of lush foliage running the length of the garden.

The flower garden seamlessly merges into ornamental meadows planted with large drifts of bulbs for an extended season and referencing the Queen’s Garden at Frogmore House and William Robinson’s Gravetye. The meadow is punctuated with occasional large scale specimen trees – oak and elm, representative of the English landscape.

At its boundaries, the garden is ‘held’ by woodland with scalloped edges and pockets of dappled shade to establish a rich ground flora. Here, we have planted a carpet of lily-of-the-valley and multi-stemmed witch hazel for winter interest. The boundary with Chester Road provides a more subdued backdrop with the beautiful existing hornbeams set in a simple evergreen groundcover to act as a foil to the more exuberant interior. This understorey of Sarcococca fills the terrace with its wonderful scent during late winter.

A number of plants were selected for their direct association with the late Queen, including her favourite flower, lily of the valley, and species used in significant royal events such as rosemary and myrtle. Other plants were especially chosen for their royal association, including Magnolia ‘Windsor Beauty’, Acer campestre ‘Queen Elizabeth’ and Wisteria ‘Royal Purple’.

Planting Numbers:

• 60+ tree species including signature Magnolia salicifolia ‘Wada’s Memory’
• 37,000 perennials creating layered, naturalistic displays
• Over 200,000 bulbs, many of them timed for the Queen’s April birthday celebration
• Over 3,500m² of wildflower meadow Aquatic, marginal plants and wetland
• The Royal Parks’ nursery at Hyde Park has made a major contribution to the project, providing over 7,000 plants.

Designed to adapt to a changing climate and accommodate significant visitor numbers, the garden has been conceived as a long-term landscape that will evolve over time. It embraces the idea of a slow garden, one that will establish and mature gradually, ensuring that future generations can continue to enjoy London’s natural beauty and biodiversity.

The new garden is open from April 2026  to commemorate what would have been the Queen’s 100^th birthday, creating a lasting tribute that celebrates her remarkable life, service and lifelong love of nature and gardens. It provides a beautiful new addition to The Regent’s Park, building on the tradition of individual gardens set within the wider park.

At a time when urban wildlife faces unprecedented pressure, the garden not only offers a respite from the busy city but also serves as a vital conservation effort. This radical approach to a public park looks ahead, designed to adapt alongside our changing climate, ensuring that future generations can continue to enjoy London’s natural beauty and biodiversity

At the heart of the project is the transformation of a redundant plant nursery into a biodiverse public garden. The central idea underpinning both the design and its aesthetic was the reuse of materials arising from the demolition of the site’s glasshouses, resulting in 80% reduction in embodied carbon when comparing the largest carbon contributors with typical practice.

The former store yard had little viable topsoil. Rather than importing new soil, we worked with soil scientists Tim O’Hare Associates to create it. Redundant concrete foundations were crushed and mixed with quarry overburden to form the new substrates, consisting of 75% concrete crush and 25% quarry overburden.

Thames gravel, which once lined the glasshouse floors, was washed on site and reused in the garden’s terrazzo paths. These were poured in situ and the surface ground to reveal the beautiful ambers and buffs within the aggregate. Iron ore fragments appear across the surface like small meteorite tails, subtle reminders of the site’s layered history.

Steel members salvaged from the greenhouse frames have been given new life in the pergola and tower balcony. Benches within the woodland walk and meadows have been made from trees fallen within The Regent’s Park. These benches are natural in character to reinforce their informal setting.

In addition to the recycled concrete and aggregates, Yorkstone is the other predominant material within the garden – from finely finished to rough-hewn, it has been selected for its timeless quality, longevity and UK provenance, which together reduce whole-life carbon impacts and will age beautifully.

The sustainable reuse of materials has guided not only the construction but also the character of the garden. The low-fertility soils, in particular, have shaped the planting approach. Drawing on natural plant communities found on English chalk downlands and in Mediterranean landscapes, the garden is climate-resilient, biodiverse and rich in colour, texture and scent throughout the seasons, achieving a biodiversity net gain of 184%.

We have sensitively reimagined the 1950s water tower which served the decommissioned plant nursery. The former water tank was located on top of the tower and has been reinterpreted as a habitat box for bats and swifts.

A new balcony is decked in recycled steel sections salvaged from the glasshouses that one stood here and the courtyard, at the foot of the tower, traces the plantroom as a reference to its former use. The terrace is paved in a mix of setts reclaimed from site, Portland stone from Greenwich Park and Yorkstone from The Royal Park’s store.

A carefully designed SuDS network provides resilience to wetter winters and storms by collecting rainwater and attenuating it through a series of connected swales – providing ephemeral ponds and a lush ribbon of moisture loving planting that runs through the garden. The former basement of the water tower also stores water collected from the adjacent barn roof for use in the garden. This approach sustainably manages water from the storeyard and the garden itself which was previously directly discharged into London’s sewers.

Summary of Environmental Achievements:

• 80% less embodied carbon than a typical scheme.
• Almost an acre of hard surfacing changed to soft landscape and planting.
• Over 5 million litres of rainwater intercepted and sustainably managed every year.
• 100% of non-contaminated waste diverted from landfill.
• 184% Biodiversity Net Gain
• BREEAM Infrastructure Award of Excellence