STUDIO

The Lost Gardens of London exhibition at the Garden Museum in Lambeth, London

Robert Thicknesse

HAS ANY NATION EVER FELT HUMANITY’S EXPULSION from Eden more keenly than the English? Exiles in Metroland, in towns and cities, they trudge around the countryside and the parks of stately homes, pining after the lost paradise. With wistful fanaticism, they cultivate lawns and flowerbeds in the tiniest and least propitious of spaces. The war between city and greenery is eternal. The concrete and asphalt, like a voracious amoeba, seeks open land to engulf. As with everything else, London is naturally the epicentre of this elemental struggle. As it splurged outwards in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, gobbling up fields and villages, greenness was preserved in its heart by the gardens of the wealthy, the Royal parks, the visions of speculative developers and architects factoring bosky garden squares into their…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2024

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