Gardens

When we lived in London it always struck us with a degree of surprise to find roses blooming in November, or spring bulb flowers beginning to bloom in late January, and we're experiencing the same semi-surprise again now. The climate here is definitely (still) mild enough for plants not to go dormant in the same patterns as in the northern parts of the United States where we have lived. I've noticed many flowering plants these past few days.

I've also noticed how many of the streets in this part of London have Gardens in their names: Bolton Gardens, Collingham Gardens, Cresswell Gardens, Rosary Gardens, Bina, Bramham, Courtfield, Cranley, Drayton, Evelyn, Gledhow, Harrington, Onslow, Queens Gate, Redcliffe, Roland, Southwell, Stanhope, Wetherby, and on and on. This whole area must have been almost exclusively gardens at some point in the past--I'm imagining mostly vegetable gardens for the feeding of local residents or for sale by the large landowners of the area. In some cases there remain actual gardens in the sense of enclosed parky "squares" (not necessarily rectangular in outline) that provide vegetated oases for residents of the immediate vicinity, who generally access them with keys to a gate. In most cases, though, all those former gardens seem to have fallen victim to the pressure of housing development.

The gardens that remain are carefully tended. Some display proud announcements: for example the one above: "London Garden Squares Competition -- Large Private Square - Third Prize - Wetherby Gardens - 2014" with a seal in the corner surrounded by the words "Organized and Judged by - The London Gardens Society." Others say merely "Private Gardens" and enforce the privacy with the presence of Anti-Climb Spikes; the ones in the middle picture look to me esthetically pleasing as well as a probably effective deterrent to trespassers.

In our neighborhood there's a corner where all four street segments are Gardens, but mostly different ones, and not necessarily the same on both sides of the street let alone both sides of the intersection. On the map, it looks as though Collingham Gardens goes north and south through the intersection, and as though the road it intersects is Bolton Gardens to the west and Wetherby Gardens to the east. But really, it goes like this:

the northern segment from the center of the intersection is, yes, Collingham Gardens on both sides;

the southern segment is Bolton Gardens on both sides (not, as my otherwise very satisfactory map suggests, a continuation of Collingham Gardens);

the eastern segment is Wetherby Gardens on the north side of the street but Gledhow Gardens #10-17 on the south side of the street, and also #15 Bolton Gardens--see the third picture above for that corner;

the western segment is Bolton Gardens on the south side of the street but on the north side in addition to some Bolton Gardens addresses there are also #1-8 Collingham Gardens.

There's another section of Gledhow Gardens, which as far as I can tell is not a continuation of this bit but shares a street segment with the Old Brompton Road. There are other bits of Bolton Gardens all over the place, not to be confused with all the other streets with Bolton in their names, such as Boltons Place, The Boltons and The Little Boltons.

In order to get this all correctly I had to go back to the spot and check it out again, and even now I'm not sure I have it right. It has to be one of the most fiendishly confusing intersections in all of London.