An award-winning garden by a Radlett designer is now open to the public .
Kate Gould’s Wild West End Garden has been moved to Old Quebec Street in London after it won a gold medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018 in the Space to Grow category.
Just off Oxford Street, the garden aims to be a calm, tranquil space in the heart of London’s busiest shopping district.
Seeing as London has some of the dirtiest air in Europe, all plants, flowers and trees used in the garden were chosen because they can thrive in polluted areas and absorb a lot of CO2 .
These include acer ginnala, cornus kousa, and heptacodium miconioides.
The Chelsea designs included kinetic paving stones, which uses energy harvested from pedestrian’s walk to power lights, but these were not installed in Old Quebec Street.
It is hoped the garden will create a home for rare species which have settled in the area, including the black redstart, starling and leisler’s bat.
It was sponsored by the Sir Simon Milton Foundation and The New West End Company, and created by the latter in collaboration with The Portman Estate, Baker Street Quarter Partnership and Marble Arch BID, and Wild West End.
Kate said: “I feel privileged to have been asked to be a small part of the greening of London, many of the gardens I have put on the showground at Chelsea have been related to this theme as I feel it is imperative to create healthier spaces for people living in and frequenting the city.”
At the RHS Chelsea Flower Show Kate’s designs have been awarded one silver medal, five gold medals, and Best in Show three times.
Kate added: “I hope the garden thrives, is well used and helps to improve the air quality for visitors and residents of the West End for the time it will be spending in this space.”
The garden will be open to the public, and the stretch of Old Quebec Street closed to traffic, for 18 months until December 2019.
Kate’s garden is part of a broader programme led by the New West End Company to improve the West End’s public spaces, which includes a £10m overhaul of Bond Street.
It is estimated that 142 million people visit Oxford Street’s 260 shops each year.
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