One bright morning recently my friend suggested a very spontaneous trip to the Sky Gardens, having looked online the night before and noticed that there were still a few slots left. For to enter this free "garden in the sky" you are advised to book a slot well in advance as demand is so high and space is limited. Despite it being called Sky Gardens, people don't really come for the plants though - these are merely an add-on. What people come for is the view - breath-taking, 360 degrees across London. For the Sky Garden occupies the top three "floors" at 20 Fenchurch Street, otherwise known to Londoners as the "Walkie-Scorchy".
That nickname, by the way, came about after the concave shape of the building, reminiscent of one of the early, chunky "Walkie-Talkie" handsets, helped focus the sun's rays to devastating effect. Looming large in the city's skyline the then newly unveiled glass façade pinpointed those sun beams on a hapless fancy sportscar parked somewhere on the road below which was left partly molten and deformed. Cue: some very funny headlines and much ridicule. Architects and engineers have since promised they've seen to it so this won't ever happen again.
That nickname, by the way, came about after the concave shape of the building, reminiscent of one of the early, chunky "Walkie-Talkie" handsets, helped focus the sun's rays to devastating effect. Looming large in the city's skyline the then newly unveiled glass façade pinpointed those sun beams on a hapless fancy sportscar parked somewhere on the road below which was left partly molten and deformed. Cue: some very funny headlines and much ridicule. Architects and engineers have since promised they've seen to it so this won't ever happen again.
The view to the north: Cheesegrater and Ghurkin amongst several building sites
As with most publicly accessible skyscrapers post 9/11 you arrive to almost airport-like security levels and we queued for the metal detector, joking that we were ready for take-off. Then we took off, for a nano-break from earthbound humdrum, the lift spitting us out on the 35th floor. Entering a huge, airy atrium or vestibule you are surrounded by glass on all sides safe the ground below your feet and the "middle bit" which houses the lifts and a café and restaurant on the levels above. (Those "levels above" only exist in this "middle-bit", of course.) There are also two café- or bar-style counters where you can buy refreshments to go and a number of seats and tables scattered around. Other than that, though, it's views, views, views. On the south-facing side, with the Thames river deep down below, there's even an open-air terrace.
Oh and yes, there are plants, too - it's called the Sky Garden after all. Wedged either side between stairs and the middle tract, the planting slopes like a hillside up to the restaurant-level, consisting of favourites like tree-ferns, Strelizia, Ficus lyrata and Cycadales. These plantings make the place much more pleasant, but they don't take centre-stage. (And how could they compete with a setting like this.) It amused me to see that a garden in the sky is evidently not high enough to be out of reach for the humble greenhouse whitefly for there were tell-tale yellow sticky traps aplenty. Comfort to less high-flying gardeners everywhere, I'd say.
Oh and yes, there are plants, too - it's called the Sky Garden after all. Wedged either side between stairs and the middle tract, the planting slopes like a hillside up to the restaurant-level, consisting of favourites like tree-ferns, Strelizia, Ficus lyrata and Cycadales. These plantings make the place much more pleasant, but they don't take centre-stage. (And how could they compete with a setting like this.) It amused me to see that a garden in the sky is evidently not high enough to be out of reach for the humble greenhouse whitefly for there were tell-tale yellow sticky traps aplenty. Comfort to less high-flying gardeners everywhere, I'd say.
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Reading up on the Sky Gardens afterwards, I learned that the planting was inspired by "the gravity defying ancient forests you see on rocky outcrops". The concept apparently is a "narrative based on the 'Evolution of plants'" with the garden "split into three zones: Shade Tolerant Forest, a Transition Zone and flowering plants" as its creators, landscape architecture practice Gillespies, put it.
The Sky Garden's own website describes it as a series of richly planted terraces, dominated by drought resistant Mediterranean and South African species. "Individual plants have been chosen to work in harmony with the particular quality of light found under the roof canopy." Which presumably means "a lot, year-round, though not as much sunshine as in more sun-favoured parts of the world such as the Mediterranean". The website also claims that "colour and flowers flourish all year round". Well, those we witnessed came from a lonely cymbidium orchid and a handful of Strelizia flowers. But January is perhaps not the best month to judge, I'd like to see it again at some other time of year.
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All said, I'd wholeheartedly recommend the experience if the weather is half-decent (i.e. you are likely to see more than an all-enveloping glum grey) but perhaps not primarily for the planting.
The Sky Garden's own website describes it as a series of richly planted terraces, dominated by drought resistant Mediterranean and South African species. "Individual plants have been chosen to work in harmony with the particular quality of light found under the roof canopy." Which presumably means "a lot, year-round, though not as much sunshine as in more sun-favoured parts of the world such as the Mediterranean". The website also claims that "colour and flowers flourish all year round". Well, those we witnessed came from a lonely cymbidium orchid and a handful of Strelizia flowers. But January is perhaps not the best month to judge, I'd like to see it again at some other time of year.
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All said, I'd wholeheartedly recommend the experience if the weather is half-decent (i.e. you are likely to see more than an all-enveloping glum grey) but perhaps not primarily for the planting.
Choicer planting can be found at the third big conservatory (third after Barbican and Sky Gardens, of course), the roof garden on top of the new Crossrail Station in Canary Wharf. For the uninitiated: Crossrail is a major new infrastructure project here in London, providing extra rail capacity and faster access between the East and the West of London and beyond, with the first trains running later this year (though it is not scheduled to fully open until 2019). Some stations in London have been upgraded for it, but there are quite a few built especially for Crossrail, the station at Canary Wharf being one such.
The actual station is subterranean - 18 metres below the waterline of the surrounding former West India Quay docks - and there are several levels above with amenities such as shops and restaurants. British firm Foster + Partners designed the cladding enveloping the storeys above ground, as well as the most striking part of the building by far: the roof structure. Somehow the latter reminds me of an empty chrysalis. 310 metres long, it consists of an elaborate timber lattice of beams, overall forming something like a tunnel with its ends opening outwards and upwards and the timber lattice creating a series of triangles. Apparently it is to evoke "a ship laden with unusual and exotic specimens from around the globe" - at least that's what the garden designers' website says.
I'm told the complex geometric is all based on a pattern of code, with hardly two triangles the same size or shape. The majority are filled with transparent panels built so that an air cushion between ETFE layers (a type of plastic) helps insulate and shelter the gardens, but some of these triangles are left empty, meaning they are open and rain, wind etc. can all enter. This creates a unique microclimate: not fully enclosed, but sheltered enough to allow for planting that would not otherwise be possible in such an exposed situation, especially since the nearby skyscrapers of Canary Wharf create fierce wind tunnels and ensure that the roof gardens - north of them - get very little direct sunlight.
The actual station is subterranean - 18 metres below the waterline of the surrounding former West India Quay docks - and there are several levels above with amenities such as shops and restaurants. British firm Foster + Partners designed the cladding enveloping the storeys above ground, as well as the most striking part of the building by far: the roof structure. Somehow the latter reminds me of an empty chrysalis. 310 metres long, it consists of an elaborate timber lattice of beams, overall forming something like a tunnel with its ends opening outwards and upwards and the timber lattice creating a series of triangles. Apparently it is to evoke "a ship laden with unusual and exotic specimens from around the globe" - at least that's what the garden designers' website says.
I'm told the complex geometric is all based on a pattern of code, with hardly two triangles the same size or shape. The majority are filled with transparent panels built so that an air cushion between ETFE layers (a type of plastic) helps insulate and shelter the gardens, but some of these triangles are left empty, meaning they are open and rain, wind etc. can all enter. This creates a unique microclimate: not fully enclosed, but sheltered enough to allow for planting that would not otherwise be possible in such an exposed situation, especially since the nearby skyscrapers of Canary Wharf create fierce wind tunnels and ensure that the roof gardens - north of them - get very little direct sunlight.
Crossrail Place: the "above ground" part of the new Crossrail Station building in Canary Wharf, by architects Foster + Partners; image taken from the www.crossrail.co.uk website
The Crossrail Place roof garden thus is highly unusual - I don't know of a single other example with such a combination of 'sheltered and open to the elements'. It means that strictly speaking this is no conservatory, of course. But for the purpose of this blog and due to a number of characteristics they share I'd still class it as such. Like the Sky Garden, the actual garden was designed by landscape architects Gillespies. It opened to the public in May 2015, well ahead of the Crossrail station, and has won its creators a host of awards, most recently the European Garden Award 2018.
The concept here is much more convincing, at least to my mind. North of Greenwich, sitting almost exactly on the Prime Meridian dividing the globe into an Eastern and a Western hemisphere, atop a train track that will link East and West London and, moreover, in what used to be the docks where ships unloaded their cargo from all corners of the British Empire, the theme seems a no-brainer. But I guess that this is the case for all the best concepts - in hindsight! Anyway, the garden is divided into an Eastern and a Western half (though not physically, wandering through you won't notice such a clear distinction) with planting chosen from the respective hemisphere.
It is said that some of the species planted in the roof garden first entered Britain through the very docks that used to be in this place, the wheel hub of the historic British Empire's worldwide trading. (Today, of course, they are docks only in name, "basin" or at best "marina" being a more appropriate description.) Other plants at least are native to places the ships unloading their cargo here had visited. So in the "Eastern hemisphere" you have bamboo, Nandina domestica (also know as "sacred bamboo" though botanically no bamboo at all), Fatsia japonica, Phormium (the New Zealand flax), acers and magnolias, for instance, and sweet gum and tree ferns in the West.
The concept here is much more convincing, at least to my mind. North of Greenwich, sitting almost exactly on the Prime Meridian dividing the globe into an Eastern and a Western hemisphere, atop a train track that will link East and West London and, moreover, in what used to be the docks where ships unloaded their cargo from all corners of the British Empire, the theme seems a no-brainer. But I guess that this is the case for all the best concepts - in hindsight! Anyway, the garden is divided into an Eastern and a Western half (though not physically, wandering through you won't notice such a clear distinction) with planting chosen from the respective hemisphere.
It is said that some of the species planted in the roof garden first entered Britain through the very docks that used to be in this place, the wheel hub of the historic British Empire's worldwide trading. (Today, of course, they are docks only in name, "basin" or at best "marina" being a more appropriate description.) Other plants at least are native to places the ships unloading their cargo here had visited. So in the "Eastern hemisphere" you have bamboo, Nandina domestica (also know as "sacred bamboo" though botanically no bamboo at all), Fatsia japonica, Phormium (the New Zealand flax), acers and magnolias, for instance, and sweet gum and tree ferns in the West.
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The latter actually come from New Zealand and Australia, which should place them in the Eastern hemisphere, but I guess the design isn't that strict and "the West" needed some tall evergreen plants to give structure and the sculptural quality of the tree ferns was perfect. Especially when you consider that the world is a globe and if you go just that little further west from the Americas... I was surprised to see just how much some plants, Nandina in particular, had grown since the first time I took some pictures - which was about two years ago and unfortunately on an equally bleak winter day! So these pictures here really don't do the garden justice, I'm afraid.
A wide path curves or zigzags through the garden, with narrower ones meandering off it into "the undergrowth" - or at least some more secluded parts. Benches are dotted throughout which prove very popular at lunchtime with people working locally. There's also a small amphitheatre-like structure, which a website explains is a "60-seater performance space" where "a programme of music and theatre" is offered in summer, with an explicit invitation to local community groups to get involved. There are also several educational panels, explaining the concept of the garden and thus also a bit about the history of the docks, the voyages of discovery and some plants important to trade - such as pepper, tea, coffee, bananas, sugar or silk.
I'm told that the original concept involved park pavilion-like structures at either end of the garden where you could get a coffee, for instance. Unfortunately this has morphed into restaurants which do not feel part of the garden at all but quite separate as they face away from it, bookending the garden instead.
Access, by the way, is easy enough: the roof garden is just an escalator-ride away from the shops and restaurants, with no need to book or anything (unlike the Sky Gardens). As the building currently is still a bit tucked away, off the main routes in Canary Wharf, it still feels secluded and almost as if you are let in on a secret only some "in-the-know" people share. This sure is to change as soon as Crossrail opens to trains as then it suddenly will become one of the busiest places in Canary Wharf. So get thee there as soon as you can, before everyone else does, too!
A wide path curves or zigzags through the garden, with narrower ones meandering off it into "the undergrowth" - or at least some more secluded parts. Benches are dotted throughout which prove very popular at lunchtime with people working locally. There's also a small amphitheatre-like structure, which a website explains is a "60-seater performance space" where "a programme of music and theatre" is offered in summer, with an explicit invitation to local community groups to get involved. There are also several educational panels, explaining the concept of the garden and thus also a bit about the history of the docks, the voyages of discovery and some plants important to trade - such as pepper, tea, coffee, bananas, sugar or silk.
I'm told that the original concept involved park pavilion-like structures at either end of the garden where you could get a coffee, for instance. Unfortunately this has morphed into restaurants which do not feel part of the garden at all but quite separate as they face away from it, bookending the garden instead.
Access, by the way, is easy enough: the roof garden is just an escalator-ride away from the shops and restaurants, with no need to book or anything (unlike the Sky Gardens). As the building currently is still a bit tucked away, off the main routes in Canary Wharf, it still feels secluded and almost as if you are let in on a secret only some "in-the-know" people share. This sure is to change as soon as Crossrail opens to trains as then it suddenly will become one of the busiest places in Canary Wharf. So get thee there as soon as you can, before everyone else does, too!
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