Green Park: London’s Only Royal Park With No Flower Beds, By Design

Green Park has 19 hectares of old lime and plane trees and mown grass. No flower beds, no ornamental lake, no bandstand. This is not neglect; it was a deliberate choice when Charles II laid it out in the 1660s, and the park has maintained that character ever since. When St James’s Park is crowded with Buckingham Palace tourists and Hyde Park has its summer event infrastructure, Green Park tends to be the quiet one. Office workers from Mayfair eat lunch here on good days. Dog walkers use it before rush hour. The park has the quality of a place not quite trying to be anything except itself.

What the Park Contains

The Canada Memorial near the Constitution Hill entrance, erected in 1994, commemorates Canadian servicemen and women from both World Wars. A pool of flowing water over polished granite incised with maple leaves – understated and well-made, and walked past by almost everyone.

The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Walk passes through the park on its 11-kilometre route connecting Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Green Park, and St James’s Park. Marked by circular discs in the ground, it structures a half-day walking route that avoids main roads for most of its length and connects the main central London parks in sequence.

The Queen’s Walk along the park’s eastern edge, bordering St James’s, is pleasant and largely untrafficked. The Piccadilly boundary on the north has mature tree canopy that is noticeably cooler in summer than the street itself.

The Surrounding Streets

The reason to be in this part of London is the neighbourhood as much as the park.

St James’s Street running south from Piccadilly has been a street of quality trade since the 17th century. Lock and Co. hatters at No. 6 has occupied the same shop since 1676 and made hats for Nelson and Wellington. Berry Bros and Rudd wine merchants at No. 3 have traded since the 1690s; the shop smells of old wood and wine barrels and the cellars below go deeper into St James’s history than the street-level display suggests.

Jermyn Street, one block north, is the best shirtmaker street in London by a significant margin. Turnbull and Asser, Hilditch and Key, Harvie and Hudson: the concentration is a historical accident that has maintained itself into the present. Even without buying, the window displays reward five minutes.

The Churchill War Rooms, on Horse Guards Road adjacent to St James’s Park (10 minutes south), are among the more affecting museums in London. The underground bunker where Churchill’s cabinet met through the Blitz is preserved essentially as it was in 1945 – the ashtrays, the map tables, the emergency bedroom Churchill rarely used. Allow two hours.

Eating

The Wolseley on Piccadilly opposite the Ritz is the most impressive room in London at its price point: an Austro-Hungarian cafe in a 1920s car showroom with high coffered ceilings. Breakfast and lunch are more affordable than dinner. Fortnum and Mason’s Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon on the top floor of their Piccadilly store does excellent afternoon tea at lower prices than the Ritz across the road.

For working-lunch quality: Maison Bertaux on Greek Street in Soho (15 minutes through Piccadilly Circus) is London’s oldest patisserie, open since 1871. The croissants are genuinely good.

Staying

The Stafford London on St James’s Place is a boutique hotel with an atmospheric wine cellar and a courtyard garden reached through an unmarked door on a quiet street. The area generally runs expensive; budget travellers are better served in Victoria or Pimlico, reachable on foot or by Tube.