"If it's not rooted down, it's for sale!"
Walworth Garden — a 40-year-old community oasis a few minutes' walk from Kennington Tube station — is part secret garden, part garden centre.
Passers-by are lured in by the Crystal Dome-like greenhouse poking through the foliage by the entrance, and — on the torrid day we visited, at least — the enticing pssst-pssst-pssst of a sprinkler, somewhere deep inside the garden.
Weave your way around bark-strewn paths to admire some 250 plant species — including fuchsias, alliums, banana palms and geraniums — and know that anything you don't have to wrench out of the ground can be bought. The money goes towards the upkeep of the garden, a volunteer-run charity, that's operated here since 1987; long before the Strata building existed, the three-fanned tip of which can just be made out in the middle distance.
If you're struggling to work out which plants to buy, stop to mull it over on sculptor Arthur De Mowbray's bench, carved into a paid of hands caressing a butterfly. It's also a good spot from which to contemplate drifting dragonflies and bees. Newts, foxes and stag beetles also call this jungly swathe of south London home.
You might think a one-third-acre site in the midst of heavily residential Southwark might be a former bomb site. In fact, the wedge-shaped plot of land was created in the late 1970s, when a group of Victorian terraces was cleared to make room for new housing. The council's depleted funds, however, failed to cover the cost of the intended development, and eventually, the council instead leased the land to locals, who transformed it into the place you see today. Read up more on the gardern's history here.
As well as pottering around the plants — and yes, you can go inside the Crystal Dome, it's full of potted succulents and cacti — Walworth Garden hosts workshops for budding horticulturalists, with topics including mushroom growing, and planting for pollinators — as well as part-time Environmental Gardening courses.
For quarter of a century, this corner of Southwark was home to a far grander garden, namely the Royal Surrey Zoological Gardens — one of London's first public zoos, and an unlikely home to animals such as monkeys, antelopes and ostriches. Incredulously — and in the same vein as Walworth Garden now — the exhibits were for sale. You could buy a male giraffe for £250, or four brown bears for £19, 15 shillings.
In nearby Pasley Park, you'll find information boards detailing the zoo's history, as well as a couple of ostrich sculptures, an homage to the park's exotic past.
Walworth Garden, open seven days a week, free entry
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