When I lived in big cities, parks were my refuge from the constant noise and relentless concrete, a way of easing my longing for something green. Yet, while they offered a chance of something other than pavement, they were often crowded. How much easier it would have been to find somewhere to hide had Toby Musgrave’s ‘Green Escapes’ been published then.
Recognising that “the city can become overwhelming”, he has given residents and visitors alike a lifeline with a guide not to the obvious green spaces in cities across the world but to the “compact hidden gems and secret oases” that are little known.
And it’s a comprehensive list ranging from private gardens to community projects and municipal schemes. What links them all is their size; these are no grand scale gardens of rolling lawns and huge flower beds. Instead, they are what Musgrave describes as “small, intimate and peaceful”.
This journey across the world is rigorously organised: the book is divided into continents with gardens then listed geographically and alphabetically. If a city has more than five featured ‘Green Escapes’, it has its own entry and map.
There are details of exact addresses, any entry fees and a brief description, while a section at the back of the book gives websites, opening times and whether there are guided tours available.
What I particularly liked was the classification of the gardens with symbols alongside the garden giving an idea of its type – among them botanic, edible, somewhere for a plantsman, rooftop or gardened for wildlife.
There are some unusual entries: Changi Airport in Singapore takes its green space so seriously there are around 500,000 plants there and the airport runs its own nursery. Among the ‘Green Escapes’ for weary travellers are an orchid garden and a butterfly garden with about 1,000 butterflies. It’s almost worth making a journey there.
Alcatraz is another place that wouldn’t spring to mind if you were looking for an urban oasis but it has seven gardens and Musgrave tells us they “provide fascinating insight into the lives of those who lived – and gardened – there.”
Cemeteries feature several times, including one in Kolkata in India filled with monuments to early workers in the British East India Company, and St Peter’s Cemetery in Salzburg. It is described as “one of the world’s prettiest cemeteries” and was used as a location in the film of The Sound of Music.
Some of the gardens have a sad history. Wendy’s Secret Garden in Sydney was created by Wendy Whiteley as a way of dealing with grief after the deaths of her husband and daughter.
Others champion community spirit. King Henry’s Walk Garden in London has seen volunteers transform a piece of derelict land into an organic garden and King’s Cross in London has a skip garden with flowers and veg grown in easily moved containers – it’s already on its third site.
Perhaps the most bizarre is Bellagio Conservatory and Botanical Garden in Las Vegas where a changing display has thousands of flowers on seasonal themes including Chinese New Year and Christmas.
What these diverse gardens have in common is they allow city-dweller and traveller alike to escape for a while, to emerge as Musgrave puts it: “revitalized, uplifted, inspired and ready to face the city once more”.
• Green Escapes by Toby Musgrave is published by Phaidon, priced at £16.95 RRP. Buy now. (If you buy through this Amazon link, I get a small fee. The price you pay is not affected.)
• Review copy supplied by Phaidon.
• You can read more of my book reviews here.
• Feature picture: Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, Vancouver. Photo: © Michael Wheatley.
This looks like a fab book. I remember seeing the skip garden on a tv programme. What a brilliant idea!
Yes, the book seems really useful – already thinking I might try to track down some of the gardens when I’m next in London. I’ve come across the skip garden before as well. I think it was in a book I reviewed about community gardening. Great idea.
The small secret spaces are the best discoveries. I have my car MOT’d just around the corner from the Skip Garden so go there at least once a year, there’s always something to grab my attention. It’s a lot more public friendly now than on its previous sites when it was more skip/allotment and less café. Alcatraz looks like a good place to visit … 🙂
I wish I’d known about these places when I lived in London. I used to escape to Kew – did all my revision there 🙂