Stand in Regent’s Park on a bright spring morning and you feel it immediately.
After months of grey skies and short days, London shifts. People linger. Paths fill. The city exhales.
The opening of the Queen Elizabeth II Garden today arrives at exactly that moment.
Recently covered by BBC News and featured on Gardeners’ World, which explored the history of London’s Royal Parks, the garden is not just a new addition to one of London’s most loved parks. It is a reminder of something bigger about how this city works.
At first glance, the garden feels effortless. A place to sit, walk, pause.
But that ease is carefully designed.
Our long-term supporter HTA Design LLP led the project as designer, landscape architect, sustainability lead and principal designer. In a historic setting like Regent’s Park, originally laid out by John Nash, every decision carries weight.
How people move through the space.
How planting changes across the seasons.
How biodiversity is supported.
How the space remains open and welcoming.
Through our recent Meet the Architects session with HTA, we were reminded how much sits behind places like this. Not just design ambition, but constant negotiation between environmental performance, heritage, maintenance and everyday use.
When it works, you don’t notice it. You just feel it.
This might be a garden. But it speaks directly to how London is being built.
Because the real question is not just how many homes we deliver. It is what kind of places we are creating around them.
New planning rules now require at least a 10 percent improvement in biodiversity on most developments. Habitats must be left in a measurably better state than before.
That shifts expectations.
Green space is no longer something you add at the end. It has to be designed in from the start, alongside housing, streets and infrastructure.
At that same HTA session, their Managing Partner Simon Bayliss made a point that reframes how we think about development.
Housing does not thrive simply because it is close to a Tube station.
It thrives when it is close to community.
That means access to green space, places to meet, and environments that support everyday life. In that sense, gardens like this are not a luxury. They are part of the system that makes neighbourhoods work.
This sits at the heart of The London Society’s focus on housing and defining what good looks like in practice.
These ideas are not new.
In 1919, The London Society published our Development Plan of Greater London, one of the first attempts to think about the city as a whole.
A key principle was that green space should not be isolated or incidental. It should be planned, connected and accessible.
That plan should not be confused with today’s London Plan, produced by the Greater London Authority. But the connection is clear.
The modern plan’s focus on green infrastructure and the natural environment carries forward the same belief.
That a successful city is not just built up. It is also carefully opened out.
There is something fitting about many people across the country and Londoners discovering this new garden and public space via a programme like Gardeners’ World.
Programmes like this slow us down. They encourage us to look again at places we think we already know. That instinct is rooted in the founding purpose of the BBC, shaped by John Reith and his civic mission to inform, educate and entertain.
At its best, that mission is about helping people understand the world around them. From global systems to the detail of a garden.
It is not so far from our own role as a civic society.
The opening of the Queen Elizabeth II Garden is a timely reminder to step outside, explore, and look again at the spaces we share.
We will be continuing to explore projects like this through our programme of talks, visits and tours with more outdoor events being made available to book soon now the weather is back on our side!
Because in London, seeing a place for yourself is often the first step to understanding how the city really works. Join us as a member to get the best of London.
