Green Park: The Park Without Flower Beds
Why is it significant?
Step through the Canada Gate, with the gilded coats of arms of the Canadian provinces on its piers, and the noise of the traffic seems to soften. Ahead lie open lawns, tall London plane trees and, in summer, striped deckchairs. Now try something. Look around for a flower bed.
Key Facts
| Place | Green Park: The Park Without Flower Beds |
|---|---|
| Address | The Green Park, London SW1A 1BW, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.50460, -0.14280 |
| Part of Walk | Crowns, Pelicans and Bearskins: Royal London from The Mall to St James's |
| Generated | Generated |
Step through the Canada Gate, with the gilded coats of arms of the Canadian provinces on its piers, and the noise of the traffic seems to soften. Ahead lie open lawns, tall London plane trees and, in summer, striped deckchairs. Now try something. Look around for a flower bed. You will not find a single one.
Londoners have two stories to explain it. In the first, Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese wife of Charles the Second, learned that her husband had been picking flowers here for another woman... and ordered every flower in the park dug up. In the second, darker one, this ground was once a burial place for the lepers of the old hospital of St James, and nobody wanted to plant flowers above them. Both are legends. And in spring, to be fair, a carpet of daffodils pushes up through the grass anyway.
Charles the Second enclosed the park in the 1660s, and the road on its southern edge is Constitution Hill. The story goes that it was named after the King's daily constitutional walks. It was a dangerous road for royals: in 1840 a young man called Edward Oxford fired two pistols at Queen Victoria's carriage there, the first of several attempts on her life.
In 1749 George the Second staged a gigantic fireworks display in this park to celebrate the end of a war, and commissioned Handel to write the music. Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks was a triumph. The fireworks less so: part of the huge wooden pavilion built for the show caught fire.
Look to the eastern edge of the park, at the elegant stone palace with statues on its roof. That is Spencer House, built in the 1750s and 60s for the first Earl Spencer, an ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales, and one of the finest private palaces of eighteenth-century London. Walk towards it along the Queen's Walk, then leave the park and make for the top of St James's Street.