Kensington Roof Gardens

Part of the Kensington Roof Gardens

The Roof Gardens (formerly known as Derry and Toms Roof Gardens and Kensington Roof Gardens) is a roof garden covering 6,000 m² (1.5 acres) on top of the former Derry and Toms building on Kensington High Street, in central London, in The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The gardens – the largest roof garden in Europe – are accessible from Derry Street, through a doorway marked "99 Kensington High Street". The gardens are open to the public unless pre-booked by a private party. The gardens surround a two storey Clubhouse which hosts private events such as conferences and parties and a private members club for up to 600 guests open on Friday and Saturday nights, and are situated 30 metres (100 ft) above street level (on the 6th floor of the building) with a panoramic view over west London through windows in the walled edge.

The gardens were laid out between 1936 and 1938 by Ralph Hancock, a landscape architect, on the instructions of Trevor Bowen (then vice-president of Barkers, the Kensington department store giant that owned the site and constructed the building in 1932). The building housed the department store Derry and Toms until 1973, and then Biba until 1975. The Gardens has been listed as a Grade II site by the English Heritage in 1978.

The gardens are not visible from Kensington High Street, however the property can be identified by the Virgin flags flying from the top of the building.

It is divided into three themed gardens:

The Kensington Roof Gardens are barely visible from Kensington High Street.

• a Spanish garden, in a Moorish style based upon the Alhambra in Spain, with fountains, vine-covered walkways and Chusan palms;
• a Tudor style garden, characterised by its archways, secret corners and hanging wisteria. Roses, lilies and lavender contribute the rich summer scent to the garden;
• an English woodland garden, with over 100 species of trees, a stream, and a garden pond that is the home to pintail ducks and four flamingos called Bill, Ben, Splosh and Pecks. There are over 30 different species of trees in the woodland garden, including trees from the original planting over sixty years ago, despite having only a metre of soil in which to grow. Although they are on a rooftop, the trees were made the subject of tree preservation orders in 1976.

In 2001 Babylon Restaurant was built on the 7th floor of The Roof Gardens, which now operates as part of the property. Babylon is open Monday to Friday for lunch and Monday to Sunday for dinner. Guests can see the English Woodland Garden from the terrace, and the flamingo pond from the private dining room. Babylon offers view west from Richmond Deer Park all the way round across South London to City Point in the east.

The Roof Gardens have been owned by Sir Richard Branson since 1981, and are part of Virgin Limited Edition - the luxury portfolio of Virgin Hotels Group Ltd.

The nearest tube station is High Street Kensington.

The Roof Gardens in fiction

The Derry and Toms Roof Gardens are a significant and recurrent location in the Jerry Cornelius stories written by Michael Moorcock. They are the setting for the opening scenes of the second Cornelius novel, A Cure for Cancer (1971), where Jerry encounters a Westland Whirlwind helicopter firing on a party of tea-drinking old ladies in a satire on the (then contemporary) Vietnam war. The gardens also feature as the setting for a musical and dance extravaganza in Lorna Hill's "No castanets at the Wells". It is also the opening location in Moorcock's comic novel The Chinese Agent, featuring Jerry Cornell.

Image gallery

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  99 Kensington High Street entrance on Derry Street. The street-level entrance to the roof gardens.

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  One of the windows in the walled garden.

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  Plaque in the garden showing the founder of Barkers of Kensington

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  One of the pink flamingos that live in the gardens

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  A tent in the Spanish garden

External links

• Google Maps aerial picture of the gardens (added 9 May 2006)
• Website with pictures of this and other roof gardens in London (checked 6 September 2010)
• The Roof Garden's website (checked 6 September 2010)
• The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (A Non-Profit Group Devoted to Green Roofs)
• Ralph Hancock website (checked 6 September 2010)
• Virgin Limited Edition website (checked 6 September 2010)
• Kensington Roof Gardens Reviews (checked 6 September 2010)
• Ralph Hancock Blog (checked 6 September 2010)

Coordinates: 51°30′4″N 0°11′31″W / 51.50111°N 0.19194°W / 51.50111; -0.19194