transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Hello and welcome to the award-winning BBC Gardeners' World Magazine Podcast, brought to you by the team here at the magazine. Join us as we chat all things gardening with the nation's favourite experts. Reimagining a two-acre former service area in central London into a tranquil, richly planted, climate-resilient garden is what the Royal Parks' Head of Horticulture and Landscape Strategies Matthew Pottage has done with his team. This new garden will celebrate the late Queen Elizabeth II's life through thoughtful design, royal associations and a commitment to long-term sustainability and biodiversity. Hello, I'm Claire Venice from the magazine. From guiding the horticultural vision, planting strategy and innovative design, we'll uncover the royal planting choices, the ambitious approach to biodiversity and what visitors can expect when the garden opens later this month. Hello, Matt, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2:
[01:00] Hi, Claire. Thank you for inviting me along.

Speaker 1:
[01:02] Well, to start off with, can you tell us a bit of the story behind this garden to commemorate the late Queen Elizabeth II?

Speaker 2:
[01:09] Yes, of course. Well, it's not every day there's an opportunity to create a new garden, of course, in central London. And this part of the park used to be a horticultural nursery. So it was all 1960s glass houses. They come to the end of their life and they used to produce all the bedding for the parks. And that function was moved to Hyde Park, where there's a big nursery area now that grows all the summer bedding and winter bedding. And there was this opportunity really to repurpose that space and reimagine that space. And Regence does have quite a lot of horticulture already. It used to be the home of the Botanic Society back in hundreds of years ago now. And this idea that we could do something more naturalistic, something resilient, something more modern, something very different to what was there already kind of came about. We have a couple of very good trustees. I must give them a shout out. Wesley Kerr and Aurora Antrim, who are big fans of horticulture. Both have a big soft spot for Regence Park. And little known fact, William Robinson actually was a gardener there at the start of his career. So that whole wild gardening style, a more naturalistic style, felt like something that could be built on. And it's a really different contrast to the formal rose plantings in Queen Mary's Gardens and the Ever New Gardens, which are really Victorian. So yeah, that's how it kind of came about, was let's do something new and horticultural to commemorate the late Queen.

Speaker 1:
[02:35] It sounds like it was a natural place for the New Garden to be. Were there other areas you looked at before, or was it very much like this is the place we've got to be?

Speaker 2:
[02:43] Well, I've been with the Royal Parks a couple of years. As you can imagine, for a project of this scale, these conversations were happening before I joined. Of course, there was other things on the table. As a charity, there's always pressure for commercial income. There were other things on the table, more money-making, built environment options. Then very happily for the horticultural world, the charity landed on something green and in the spirit of all the Royal Parks being free to enter, that people could just wander in and enjoy as part of the big offer that Regents Park already has.

Speaker 1:
[03:17] So you started with quite a responsibility on your shoulders then, but a wonderful opportunity.

Speaker 2:
[03:22] Yeah, really special. So the project already had a couple of really good landscape project managers appointed. And we worked with an external designer, HTA, a lady called Katerina was the lead designer who's done a beautiful job. And also working with a planting designer, Noel Kingsbury, as well, who informed a lot of the prairie matrixes. There's a lot of crushed concrete gone into this garden, and I'll come on to the story behind that. But it's not an everyday selection of plants that wants to go in that really high alkaline pH. So Noel was very instrumental in helping us with that planting design.

Speaker 1:
[03:58] Yes. So how did the design come about? I mean, you mentioned it was a horticultural area already, but very different to the area, the design that you wanted to create. Where did you begin?

Speaker 2:
[04:09] Yeah, it's a good one. The desire to have very much a circular economy and try and use as much of the materials that were on-site in the new design was very much an aspiration. That old horticultural site actually meant loads of concrete. There was loads of concrete paths and service roads through it, it's two acre site. Then all the bases inside the greenhouses were gravel. So there's loads of gravel, loads of concrete, and then obviously aluminium from the glass house structures and glass. Now a lot of the glass and aluminium was taken off to be recycled. I haven't put a lot of glass into the garden for obvious reasons. All the pebbles that were in the bottoms of the glass houses have been rolled into the new paths so they've got like a terrazzo. Then the concrete was an enormous amount of waste basically. Of course, I think looking back 10 years, even 20 years, the standard thing in gardening was you get rid of everything you don't want all the undesirable rubble, rubbish, and then you ship in fresh topsoil. So there was a challenge of how do we reuse this? I think it's probably, I think we can safely say, the biggest demonstration of this in a public park in the country, two acres on crushed concrete growing medium. Of course, there are people doing this. John Little has been growing in other substrates for a long time. We took the team off to NEP to see what they're doing in the wall garden there, and obviously very successful. They've been gardening on that crushed rubble mix for a few years now. We brought in concrete crushers to basically crush up all these paths and all these huge lumps of concrete, and then we mix that in with the natural Regents Park soil, which is really heavy, quite horrible, actually, sticky London clay. It's very, very heavy soil at Regents Park. That's now created something much more free-draining, to grow plants much harder, much slower, and within that, be more resilient. We did some trials of it beforehand. As you can imagine, spending a lot of money in a public park, there's a desire to put the late Queen's name to it. It's going to be a garden to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II. You want it to work. We did have some test beds with a crushed concrete mix, and it was really interesting to see plants performing in that compared to the natural Regents Park rich clay soil, which were alongside them. An interesting plant, I think, to give a shout out to you, because a lot of people listening might know it, is geranium rosan. The herbaceous geranium that grows enormously, profusely, and flowers and flowers and flowers. On the Regents Park clay, it did what you expected, huge great big thing, grew very, very lush. Then last summer, so going back to 2025, obviously got quite hot and dry. The enormous one in the regular soil actually got some powdery mildew. When the drought got going, it was partially collapsing. Earlier in the spring when it was just lots of lush foliage, it did have a bit of aphid on it. It wasn't problematic. The plant was fine. But by the end of the season, it had quite a bit of powdery mildew because it was so dry. Then interestingly, the one growing in the crushed concrete mix, would have I think spent more time putting out a deeper root system, which is the theory behind this. The plant has to go searching a lot more to sustain itself. So the leaf growth was so much smaller. It was more dense. It was more compact. The flowers were actually more visible because there was less foliage. So the flower color looked more intense, but I think that was just because there wasn't masses of foliage. It didn't get aphid and it didn't get powdery mildew because it was so much smaller and so much more, it was really like if a plant in nature was self-signed up a mountain or in a very rocky ground, it just almost bonsais it slightly. So anyway, you'll have a more resilient plant. And then looking into the winter months when we're getting more wet, we know how wet this last winter was. So things like lavenders, rosemary, we've got some experimental pistachio that I've gone in there. Should be fine because the drainage is quite severe. But I will say for people visiting this first summer, this is a slow gardening movement because these plants need time to put out their root systems. So it's not going to be the Chelsea Flower Show on day one. You will see a lot of the crushed concrete. I think for a lot of people, they'll just think if they don't read the interpretation sides, they'll just think it's a gravel mulch. But that is actually the mix that they're growing in.

Speaker 1:
[08:33] How interesting that the crushed concrete has created that great environment for the plants to thrive in. Interestingly, you did the trials beforehand as well. So let's talk about the plants. Exciting part of the garden, obviously. Probably the area that people are looking forward to seeing most. Where did the plant choices begin?

Speaker 2:
[08:53] It's quite vast. Lots of plants from Mediterranean climate zones across the world, so not just the Med, there's things from New Zealand and Australia in there. We wanted things that would tolerate the hotter, drier summers that we're seeing in London. The Queen was obviously a very resilient character. We wanted this resilient theme running through the planting. Lots of Mediterranean plants, quite a lot of prairie plants, grasses, echinaceous, the kind of things you would imagine on those stony, rocky grounds. What I hope is they'll actually persist and be longer lived. Then the other exciting opportunity with this very poor soil with all the concrete through it, is to do some wildflower meadows. We had wildflower turf grown for us with a speck of plants that want to be on these higher alkaline soils. I'm really hopeful they'll actually sustain themselves and the grass won't just take over, because the nutrient levels are so low. Interestingly, we put the wildflower turf down last autumn. Looking at it at the moment, we've got lots of wildflowers budding up, and the grass does not look to be going bonkers, as it would do on the rich soil. When you're looking into the outer parts of the park, already the grass is ankle length, and all the cowpass is coming through. But this is so much more challenging, and stony, and rocky, and low nutrient. I'm hoping we'll actually have some decent long-term wildflower meadows in there.

Speaker 1:
[10:15] That would be lovely. Yeah. Interesting to watch, to see what happens, I suppose, as well.

Speaker 2:
[10:19] I must say, actually, Claire, there's thousands of bulbs, like 200,000 bulbs through the whole thing. Obviously, there's a lot of bulbs that like good drainage, don't want to be too wet in the winter. There's lots of species, narcissus, and tulips, and alliums. So, anyone thinking there's going to be enough flowers in this garden early on, that's not the case. It's a wash with bulbs at the moment.

Speaker 1:
[10:39] I bet it's gorgeous.

Speaker 2:
[10:40] Very pretty, very pretty.

Speaker 1:
[10:53] Were there any particular plants that the late queen enjoyed that you've included in the garden as well?

Speaker 2:
[10:58] Yes. So we actually worked with the late queen's quite long-serving head gardener at Buckingham Palace. He's now since retired, but Mark Lane, who looked after the Buckingham Palace Gardens for a long time, and John Anderson, who looks after the Windsor and Savile Gardens, to hear a bit of a lowdown on a few plants that she would have liked to have seen. You might not be surprised to hear Lily of the Valley, who is a classic favorite. There's also Myrtle and Rosemary, which I believe were in her wedding bouquet. Also, she was a big fan of Magnolias and flowering cherries. All appear in the new garden. Agapenthus, and there are quite a few Agapenthus that are named after different royal homes like Castle of May, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Grey. They are in the planting scheme. What Magnolia was very pleased with ourselves to have found is one called Gwyser Beauty, which we got from Yonkers nursery down in Devon. They've grown a beautiful plant in Openfield, which they supplied us with. So that features in the garden.

Speaker 1:
[11:59] How nice. This time of year as well, flowering cherry and Magnolia and bulbs.

Speaker 2:
[12:04] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[12:05] What a lovely place to be.

Speaker 2:
[12:06] There's a lot of spring colour. And earlier you asked about, did we retain anything from the scion? That's an interesting one. So yeah, a 1960s glass house complex. It's not that romantic. And obviously it is nice to try and keep something of what was there before. And the only thing we kept, and you can imagine it was a bit of a head scratcher, was a water tower, a brick water tower which served the area. And it's now got a big habitat box on the top. It's got some iron fretwork on it for climbing plants, and very cleverly designed a viewing platform in it. So you go onto this platform and you do feel quite elevated above the site. I think it's quite clever how it's been incorporated.

Speaker 1:
[12:46] That's a lovely thing to keep, isn't it, as well? And see the garden from a different perspective.

Speaker 2:
[12:49] Yeah, I think so. And the use of contours and slight mounding and how the landscape flows is, I think, is very dramatic because it was quite a flat site before. So that rhythm and the winding paths through undulations, I think, is really powerful. It's a real masterclass in contouring and land forming.

Speaker 1:
[13:09] Nice to take examples home as well, isn't it? To be able to see new spaces and design ideas, to be able to take home and bring them into your own garden spaces.

Speaker 2:
[13:16] And I really hope when people buy new builds or they say pull up some of their driveway, or they've got rid of a path in their garden and they've got rubble, historically, I think the mindset is, I've got a problem here, I need to get rid of this stuff. But to actually see it as an opportunity and try and work with it and actually think, could this actually help plants that don't need a lot of nutrient persist, or can I actually take advantage of it as drainage, make mounds with it, I don't know. Plants can grow and survive in rubble, it's not the end of the world.

Speaker 1:
[13:46] As you mentioned, last summer was extremely hot, so we're looking at gardens that can cope in drier conditions as well, aren't we? So yes, good to experiment and try out.

Speaker 2:
[13:54] Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[13:55] Well, you mentioned the cherry trees and magnolias. Are there any other trees in the garden that we can expect to see when we visit?

Speaker 2:
[14:02] Yes, so the trees have been a fun piece of work. That is something I influenced quite a bit. So we wanted trees that show resilience to the changing climate, trees that don't have a long list of pests and disease associated with them. So the trees are quite, if you're a keen gardener, I think you'll be quite impressed. There might even be a few trees you've never seen before. So for example, we've used macchia and muriensis, which you don't see very often. Beautiful thing. We used to have the, well, still do have the champion tree at Wisley, the team down in Surrey. But you just don't see that around much. We managed to find that. We've got a couple of different elms, which are resistant to Dutch elm disease. We've got the stone pine, the lovely pine tree, that edible pine that's come from. The magnolias, as we've mentioned. Then there's a couple of wildcards. So we've got some Gravillia robusta, which is a New Zealand native. It is a small tree. You generally don't see them outside in the UK much, but there is quite a large one in Hyde Park, which I think at one time was just put in as a specimen in some bedding and got forgotten about, and it's now bigger than the building it stands next to. So playing around with a few experiments as well.

Speaker 1:
[15:08] I just put a few wildcards in there.

Speaker 2:
[15:09] Yeah, exactly. There are nods to Commonwealth countries, and New Zealand's nod actually is Pseudopanax crassifolius, which is that very strange looking plant which mimics something dead until it gets to about six foot high and then the leaves go green. But while it's juvenile, they're long, thin and browny black. So I mean, I think a lot of people will think we've got a few dead plants in there actually, but they are really quirky and they have this fun story of how to avoid being grazed when they're small. So yeah, there are a few quirky plants in there. So I think King Gardeners will enjoy it too.

Speaker 1:
[15:43] How much input did the Royal family have in the creation and design of the garden? Have they been involved at all?

Speaker 2:
[15:49] Well, as I'm sure you know, the King is a King gardener. So yeah, we've had a really positive interactions with the palace and the plans have been back and forth. To the King, even to the point of showing some plant names of what's going to be growing where. So there's been a positive interest there, which we were hoping for. And you know what's really lovely? Such a busy man's made some time to actually look at these plans. It's been a nice interaction.

Speaker 1:
[16:14] I think a lot of us, when we lose someone, myself included, you know, I buy a plant or a tree to remember, and then you've got something to go back, haven't you? You remember that person. I mean, this is obviously on a much grander scale, but it is really nice to have somewhere to go to remember and spend some time contemplating and thinking about that person.

Speaker 2:
[16:33] And I think for a lot of Londoners and anyone else who visits the garden who had a soft spot for the late queen, you can take that moment in there. If that's not for them, it's just a very pretty garden. But there are obviously the messages and the themes woven all the way through it.

Speaker 1:
[16:46] So the garden opens very soon.

Speaker 2:
[16:49] It does. Yeah, 21st of April. So when the queen would have been 100. So yeah, quite a big day. And then we're just after that, we're desperate to get the gates open and let people in because it's all waking up. It's all blooming. All the bulbs I mentioned before in flowers. So we're really keen to welcome visitors in and see what everyone thinks.

Speaker 1:
[17:08] Within the garden, you repurposed a lot of what we talked about. There's a sustainability element to the garden as well, and also to encourage more biodiversity into the area. That's obviously a key part. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[17:18] I mean, the huge diversity of plants, the planting density is incredible to what was there before with just quite a barren site. Then you'll notice around the edges of the garden, it is still quite wild. One of the big drivers for that, and this is really cool, is that Regent's Park is the last known site in Central London for breeding hedgehogs. There is a big population of them and that we know they're present on one of the hedge lines alongside the garden edge. You'll be walking through the new garden and you'll see in two steps a little woodland walk with huge log piles. It's quite tumble down, there's bits of fallen tree, there's ivy, there's branches that have fallen years ago, and it looks maybe unkempt if you didn't know really what you was looking at or expecting to see, but that is brilliant for the hedgehogs. That is quite untouched actually. And then from just a resilience point of view, and a more of a sustainable point of view with water use, we will water for establishment. Of course, we don't want things to die in the first couple of years, but the idea is that things won't have regular water and things will sustain and find their own balance.

Speaker 1:
[18:24] That's interesting. And yes, probably the way we all need to start gardening.

Speaker 2:
[18:28] Well, yeah, I mean, just we saw what it was like last summer. Not everyone has water available to them. So Fiona, the head gardener, will be very much monitoring the success rates, what performs, what actually starts to self-seed and perpetuate. If plants are dying out and they need life support to survive in there, chances are we'll let them go. Because this isn't something that needs to be continually edited. This is supposed to be a climate resilient garden. So if things need handholding, chances are they won't have their hands held. If they can't establish, they won't be for that garden long term.

Speaker 1:
[18:59] Interesting. We're looking at a garden, isn't it? And the right way, I guess, we need to start looking at our gardens, what works in our gardening spaces and what doesn't, and to encourage those that do. And the self-seeding aspect as well. So to not take away anything that has decided to seed, you're going to let it thrive and grow.

Speaker 2:
[19:15] Yeah. And it's that fine line, I think, of editing. And if things are happy and they're persisting, great. If they're too successful, Fiona and her team will be editing back. Obviously, they want one thing to outcompete. It's a bit of a learning curve. And I think it's fun to have this opportunity and in a public space where people can come for free and learn with us and watch what's happening.

Speaker 1:
[19:34] So with a lot of garden being a dry garden of sorts, with the crushed concrete helping drainage, when it rains a lot in the winter, like we've had a pretty wet winter just recently, how are you going to manage the water levels then?

Speaker 2:
[19:45] Yeah, so in the wintertime, people are actually going to see water through there. So there is a series of swales, so little rain gardens or very fancy looking ditches, if you will, through the garden. They're piped, so they do connect with each other. I think in the summer, they'll just look like stony basins. But in the wintertime, the groundwater comes up pretty quick. So we found actually through most of last winter, they actually held water in them, which was quite nice. Then the water disappears in the spring when the groundwater starts to disappear. But they are piped and they eventually drain down into the pond at the entrance to the garden. If you visit in the middle of the wintertime, when we've had a lot of rain, you will see quite a bit of standing water through the garden. Again, that's a bit of a step change from I think days of old, we might have thought this is a wet site, drainage, having bone drainage. Let's get it out. Let's pipe it out. Where can we put it? So really, this is about more embracing it and actually sculpting parts deeper to hold the water and enjoy the look of it because we've all got too much in the winter.

Speaker 1:
[20:48] Yes, but making it work for the garden as well.

Speaker 2:
[20:51] Yeah, exactly. And actually nearby, we've got a big tractor shed, a big maintenance yard right by the garden. And the other thing that we managed to do is sink a huge rainwater capture tank below the old water tower, which still stands there. So there actually is a bit of rainwater collection in the garden.

Speaker 1:
[21:09] What have you enjoyed the most about the creation of this garden?

Speaker 2:
[21:12] I think what excites me most is the fact that there's already a lot of horticulture at Regent's Park that's all free for people to see. And now we've got something experimental, new, truly sustainable and quite cutting edge for a public space. And it's two acres, you know, it's a big space. And I think it's so exciting for the people of London and of course anyone else who visits. So that kind of learning and being quite bold, doing a slow gardening thing, because I think the obvious thing would have been to clear out all the concrete, clear out all the rubble, bindlers, a nice rich topsoil and have something that looks like the Chelsea Flower Show on day one. But not to do that, I think is quite bold. And I hope people will understand that and love it for that.

Speaker 1:
[21:53] It sounds an amazing space and fantastic to have worked on it. What are you hoping for the garden as it grows and evolves? Where do you see it in the next sort of five years or so?

Speaker 2:
[22:02] I hope it will become quite prairie-like, quite dreamy, quite hazy, because a lot of the planting is matrix style. So there will be plants that people are familiar with in there, but it will have a different vibe. And I think what's exciting for me is that somebody could be looking at hybrid tea roses in monocultural rose beds in Queen Mary's gardens. They then might be looking at bedding in the Avenue Gardens with all its urns and overflowing water features and then walk into that and then just find it's a completely different world. And none of it's right or wrong. Everyone's got different tastes. Everyone finds beauty in different spaces. But I just think it's so fun to have those three massive stark contrasts and very different plant uses. I also think what will be interesting on the heavy wet clay soils of Regent's Park is some of these Mediterranean shrubs. How much better we think they'll do on this growing media, we shall see. But as you know, things like lavender and rose we don't want to be sitting around in soggy, cold, wet clay and the winter we've just had, it was just relentless volumes of rain. So if we want some of these plants to survive the summer heat, we need to help them through the winter wet.

Speaker 1:
[23:08] Yeah. We need to find those plants that survive.

Speaker 2:
[23:11] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[23:13] Interesting to talk about rosemary, a lot of herbs, Mediterranean herbs, do thrive in that environment, but to put herbs into a herbaceous border is an interesting move.

Speaker 2:
[23:23] Because there are oreganas, there are thyme, and rose mues and lavenders, and like I said, this pistachio lenticilliscus, which you don't see around that much, quite experimental. Then there's things like ericas, and heathers, there's some potentilas gone in, which you might think of as a bit of an old school, well, I do think of it as an old school 1980s car park plant, and Nell Kingsbury put me right on that and said, hang on, you might learn to love this again. You need to give this a chance and see it in a mixed matrix planting. So brilliant, and Nell is an incredible plantsman. So it's been fun working with him on that.

Speaker 1:
[23:57] There's a reason why they survive, isn't it?

Speaker 2:
[23:59] Yeah, I know, because you can drive over them three times a day in a car park, and they just spring back up. But it'd be very interesting to see them in this setting, in quite a contemporary setting.

Speaker 1:
[24:09] What's your favorite part of the garden when you walk in? What do you like best about it?

Speaker 2:
[24:12] So when you first walk in from Chester Road, the first thing that's presented to you is a huge pool, a big round pool. And then beyond it, there's a very, very linear, straight Yorkstone path, which leads to a big magnolia tree with a bench around it. And the design theory behind this is to represent the Queen's unwavering line to her duties. So it's this big, long, straight Yorkstone path to this very large bench. And it's quite striking just the way it's presented to you when you walk in. And you come in under a pergola, which is actually made with some of the recycled aluminum from their glass houses. So you come in under this pergola. It's quite soft, it's quite shady. And then you see out to this magnolia tree in the middle of the garden. And it's quite striking. Also fun, the Queen was born literally one mile away on Bruton Street. And the thing that dominates the skyline from the new garden is actually the BT Tower, which the Queen also opened when it was first built. You can see that so clearly from the garden. It just stands up a mile. It's not that far away, I don't think. So yeah, a couple of fun facts.

Speaker 1:
[25:17] What an incredible entrance to have. It's going to make people stop in their tracks by the sound of things.

Speaker 2:
[25:20] Yeah, I think so. I think they'll probably just wonder in this path thinking what's in here, and then it's presented to you, and it's bold. There's a lot of seating in there, which I think will encourage people just to loiter and want to be in the space. We don't anticipate and we don't want it to be a thoroughfare. So it sits alongside the Regent's Park Broadwalk, which is a thoroughfare of people going down at almost like Great Portland Street corner of the park, right up towards Primrose Hill, and there's lots of bikes and people going up and down in a linear line and it's just set off that and it's more meandering and there's several different points of entry to the garden. So people will find their way in and snake around and find their way back out. So we do want it to be quite a space where people are absorbing the garden, as opposed to going A to B at 100 miles an hour, rushing to work.

Speaker 1:
[26:09] Enjoy it. Are there any other nods to the late Queen's life within the garden?

Speaker 2:
[26:14] One thing that she was really fond of was the Commonwealth and actually the Pergola that I mentioned before has 56 uprides and they're to represent the 56 Commonwealth countries. Yeah, there's plant nods to those countries throughout and then some of her favorite plants and then the whole Vizillion story threads together quite nicely.

Speaker 1:
[26:35] What do you think she would have made of it? If she was going to walk into this garden, what do you think she would have thought about?

Speaker 2:
[26:40] I hope she'd love it. I mean, she would spot plants she knows and loves. She was very open-minded and broad-minded. Hopefully she would like something that's quite different and contemporary. I mean, my goodness, she must have seen enough rose gardens and enough traditional bedding and English gardens that we see a lot of. So yeah, I think and hope that she would have thought, wow, this is cool. This is different. This is special. Because it is pretty unique.

Speaker 1:
[27:02] Are there any particular colors in regards to the color palette that was chosen that's very much of the late queen?

Speaker 2:
[27:09] There's a lot of vibrant colors in there. There's lots of vibrant purples and yellows. She was obviously known for her outfits. She dressed brilliantly. Actually, when you first walk in, there's an interpretation sign with huge picture of her in a really striking purple hat with a striking purple coat that matches beautifully. It's full of purple alliums. So when they flower, without sign in the foreground, it's going to look good. But yeah, there's a lot of bold color in there. Despite its kind of naturalistic prairie look, the bold numbers have been unapologetic. So there will be a lot of color, which I think she would have loved.

Speaker 1:
[27:44] Well, Matt, thank you very much for telling us more about the garden. And I hope everyone gets an opportunity to enjoy it this year throughout the seasons. Yes. There are other royal parks. If listeners would like to visit, where are the other royal parks?

Speaker 2:
[27:55] People often wonder what actually is a royal park. And do we look after Windsor or do we look after several gardens? So the royal parks are Bushy Park, Richmond Park, Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, St. James' Park, the Green Park, Regents Park, Brimrose Hill and Greenwich Park. We also look after Brompton Cemetery and Victoria Tower Gardens. We also look after the back garden of 10 and 11 Downing Street, but obviously you can't walk in there and visit those. So let's go.

Speaker 1:
[28:23] I have to get back on the podcast and talk about those. If you could choose one plant that's in the new garden to commemorate the late queen, that you would recommend that someone could grow in their garden, which one would it be?

Speaker 2:
[28:37] It's probably the centerpiece magnolia tree because it's such a good duo. We picked for the centerpiece around the curved bench, magnolia salicifolia waders memory, which is just an outstanding cultivar. It's got a scented white flower, but they're born in such huge profusion. The tree is just absolutely a haze of white. They've got a lovely goldish fairy bud. So just before the flower buds open, it has this shimmer to it. And they're tough, you know, they're just really tough and really reliable. But the volume of flowers they produce is just sensational. So yeah, if you needed to choose one magnolia, that would be pretty high on my list.

Speaker 1:
[29:18] Lovely. Well, thanks very much, Matt, for talking to us and telling us more about the garden.

Speaker 2:
[29:23] Thank you for having me along.

Speaker 1:
[29:25] Thanks for listening to the BBC Gardeners' World Magazine Podcast. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts and never miss an episode. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell others about it and rate us in your podcast provider app.