Buckingham Palace Gardens - Royal Oasis of Tranquility


Public duties
Travelsleuth Stuart Buchanan MacWatt visits the gardens of Buckingham Palace and finds an oasis of tranquility in the centre of London that has been nurtured by Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh andprevious Kings and queens of England.

One of London's hidden garden treasures was opened to the public for the first time on 4 August, 2001. It was a glorious summer day and 7,000 visitors, many of whom had earlier thronged the entrance to Clarence House down the Mall to wish Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother well on her 101st birthday, visited gardens to discover for themselves London's hidden Royal oasis of tranquility.

The 40 acres of gardens and lake behind Buckingham Palace have been a private Royal sanctuary since Princess Victoria moved Kensington Palace to Buckingham Palace when she was proclaimed Queen in 1837. Until this summer the Palace garden has been seen only by the 30,000 guests honoured with a Royal invitation to the three Royal Summer Garden Parties hosted by the Queen and Consort each July.

This year however, a part of the garden went on show when the Buckingham Palace State Rooms were opened for August and September while Her Majesty The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh enjoy a well earned break from their gruelling schedule of public duties in the Highland seclusion of Balmoral.

A 500 yard walk along the southern perimeter of the garden has been added to the Palace State Rooms that are open for public viewing. The picturesque walk in fact becomes the exit route from the Palace's Bow Room, with its remarkable, (and unique), collection of Chelsea Porcelain, to Grosvenor Place which leads up to Decimus Burton's newly refurbished triumphal Constitution Arch and Museum, (1828), and his elegant 1825 Ionic Screen at Hyde Park Corner.

The garden walk skirts the Palace's peaceful lake, a 3 acre stretch of fish-stocked water created for George IV in 1825 by joining up two existing ponds. It is fed by the overflow of Hyde Park's Serpentine and is safe home and nesting ground to a magical variety of water birds. A Palace aide informs me that some 30 different bird species are residents or regular visitors to the lake and its environs. Over 200 trees border the lake and a rich variety of lilies, hostas, wild flowers and grasses grow on its banks. The Queen introduced a 'long grass' policy at the lakeside some years ago to encourage the propagation and proliferation of over 350 species of wild flower as well

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