London is full of small enclosed gardens that are free, open to anyone and almost invisible from the street: a barristers' lawn off Fleet Street that opens its gate at half past twelve, a sculpture garden reached through an unmarked gate in Regent's Park, a Victorian social reformer's garden behind Borough High Street. This page says where they are and when you can get in.
First, a correction that saves a wasted journey. The Kensington Roof Gardens above the old Derry and Toms building on Kensington High Street are frequently listed as a London attraction. They have not been open to the public since January 2018, when the lease arrangement that allowed general access ended. The site now operates as a private members' club, and you cannot simply turn up.
Our guide to roof gardens and free terraces deals with the ones you can reach by lift, including the Barbican Conservatory and the City's high-level gardens. This page is about the ones at ground level, behind walls and railings, that people walk past every day without noticing the gate.
Five hidden gardens and when they open
- Inner Temple Garden, EC4
- Weekdays 12.30pm to 3pm, not on bank holidays. Free
- St John's Lodge Garden, Regent's Park
- Through a gate on the Inner Circle near the park office. Free
- The Phoenix Garden, WC2
- Daily, dawn to dusk. Free
- Red Cross Garden, SE1
- 50 Redcross Way. Free
- Barber-Surgeons' Garden, EC2
- Between London Wall and the Barbican lakes. Free
- London Open Gardens 2027
- Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 June 2027, ticketed
Why the Kensington Roof Gardens are off the list
The gardens were laid out in the 1930s on top of a department store, and for decades they were one of the best-known oddities in west London: a Spanish garden, a Tudor garden, a woodland garden with a stream, and flamingos, a hundred feet above the shops. Public access depended on the operator of the club and restaurant that occupied the floor, and it ended in early 2018.
What replaced it is a members' club at 99 Kensington High Street. There is no ticket, no open day and no queue to join. If you are in Kensington and want a garden, the walled gardens beside Kensington Palace and the Italian Gardens at the top of the Long Water sit five minutes away and cost nothing. Both are described on our Hyde Park page.
Guidebooks and listicles are still sending people to Derry and Toms. If a website tells you to visit the Kensington Roof Gardens, check the date it was written. The same applies to a handful of London garden lists that include private squares as though the gate were open. When in doubt, look for published opening hours on the owner's own website rather than on a travel site.
The Inner Temple Garden: two and a half hours a day
Between Fleet Street and the river lie the Inns of Court, and the Inner Temple has three acres of lawn, borders and old trees running down towards the Embankment. It is one of the most surprising pieces of open space in central London, and it is open to the public on weekdays from 12.30pm to 3pm, excluding bank holidays.
Access is through the main gate opposite the Treasury Office on Crown Office Row. The garden closes in high winds, for private functions and for maintenance, and the Inn posts closures on the garden's own social media rather than on its website, so there is a real chance of finding the gate shut. It is worth the risk if you are already walking through the Temple, which our guide to Temple Church and the Inns of Court covers in full.
The Inn also runs a handful of open days through the year when the garden is open for longer. Those are published on its own site in advance.
St John's Lodge Garden, the one nobody finds
On the northern arc of the Inner Circle in Regent's Park, near the park office, there is a small cast-iron gate that looks private. It is not. Behind it, an arched walkway leads into a series of garden compartments laid out by Robert Weir Schultz in 1889 for the 3rd Marquess of Bute, who wanted a garden fit for meditation.
The centrepiece today is Henry Pegram's statue of Hylas and the Nymph, replacing an earlier St John the Baptist. Elsewhere stands the Goatherd's Daughter, a Grade II listed bronze of a woman carrying a young goat, erected in 1932 by the National Council for Animal Welfare with the inscription "To all the Protectors of the Defenceless". Stone boys with armorial shields stand on pillars in front of the lodge itself.
St John's Lodge is a private residence, which is why the gate feels wrong, but the Royal Parks confirm that visitors reach the gardens through it. Most people walking the Inner Circle to Queen Mary's Gardens miss it entirely. Our page on Regent's Park and Primrose Hill covers the rest of the park.
The Phoenix Garden, behind a West End theatre
Two minutes from Charing Cross Road, in St Giles, a community garden occupies a plot that was a car park until 1984. It sits behind the Phoenix Theatre, off St Giles Passage and Stacey Street, north of Shaftesbury Avenue. It is open every day from dawn until dusk and costs nothing.
It is run as a charity and managed for wildlife as much as for people, with a pond, dense planting and a deliberate scruffiness that makes it feel nothing like the West End outside. There is a pétanque area used from Tuesday to Saturday. For anyone staying around Soho or Covent Garden who wants twenty minutes of quiet without getting on a bus, it is the best option in the district.
Red Cross Garden: Octavia Hill's own project
Octavia Hill was a Victorian housing reformer and one of the three founders of the National Trust. In 1886 she had this garden built in Southwark, alongside a row of cottages, as the flagship of her argument that poor Londoners needed decent housing and decent open space rather than one or the other.
By the 1940s the design had been flattened into municipal grass and tarmac. The Bankside Open Spaces Trust restored it to the original Victorian layout in 2005 using Heritage Lottery Fund and Southwark Council money, and the Princess Royal formally reopened it on 1 June 2006. It is at 50 Redcross Way, SE1 1HA, a few minutes from Borough Market, and volunteers run tours of the historic details.
It pairs neatly with the rest of the area in our guide to Borough and Bermondsey, and with the Garden Museum across the river at Lambeth if gardening history is the theme of your day.
The City's churchyard gardens
The Square Mile contains dozens of small gardens, most of them former churchyards or bombsites. The City of London Corporation maintains them and publishes a directory, and four are worth seeking out beyond the obvious ones.
| Garden | What makes it worth the detour | Nearest station |
|---|---|---|
| Cleary Garden | Three tiers, wooden arbours and a lower lawn, built out of the cellars of buildings destroyed in the war, on the site of a Roman bathhouse | Mansion House |
| Barber-Surgeons' Garden | A herb garden created by the Worshipful Company of Barbers, with over 40 species once used to treat wounds, bruises and burns | Barbican, Moorgate or St Paul's |
| Bunhill Fields | A Nonconformist burial ground from the 1660s with around 123,000 burials, including Bunyan, Defoe and Blake. Over 2,300 memorials in five enclosures, with a public garden to the north | Old Street or Moorgate |
| Christchurch Greyfriars | A Wren church ruin planted as a garden, with the pews suggested by box hedging | St Paul's |
Two City gardens have their own pages here because they are destinations in their own right: the bombed shell of St Dunstan in the East, and Postman's Park with its wall of memorial tablets. Both are free, and both are within fifteen minutes of the four above.
London Open Gardens: the weekend the private gates open
One weekend a year, London Parks and Gardens persuades normally closed green spaces to admit ticket holders. In 2026 more than 120 gardens took part across the two days, and the charity records around 40,000 garden visits over the weekend. The 2027 dates have been announced: Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 June.
This is the only practical way to see inside many of the private garden squares of Bloomsbury, Kensington and Islington, along with livery company gardens, roof terraces and community plots. One ticket covers the weekend rather than each garden separately. Prices change each year, so check londongardenstrust.org before you plan a trip around it.
Two weekends a year get you behind most of London's locked gates. London Open Gardens in early June covers the gardens; the Open House Festival in September covers the buildings. If your trip is flexible and this is the kind of thing you travel for, those two weekends are worth planning around, and the rest of the year the list above is what remains open.
The garden squares you cannot get into
Central London has several hundred garden squares, and a large minority are private. The railings are locked, the keys belong to the surrounding householders, and there is no visitor access. Russell Square, Lincoln's Inn Fields and Bloomsbury Square are public; the smaller squares around them often are not.
The rule of thumb is simple. If there is no sign, no opening hours and no gate that anybody is using, it is private, and climbing the railings for a photograph is trespass. Our guide to Bloomsbury notes which of that district's squares are open to everyone.
A half-day that links four of them
Start at the Phoenix Garden in St Giles at about eleven. Walk down to the Temple, arriving after 12.30pm when the Inner Temple Garden opens, and give it half an hour. Cross Blackfriars Bridge or walk east along the river to Red Cross Garden in Southwark, then finish at Borough Market for lunch. That is roughly four miles with stops and takes about four hours.
For an alternative built around bigger gardens, Chelsea Physic Garden charges admission and closes every Saturday, the Kyoto Garden in Holland Park is free, and Kew takes a full day on its own. For an urban nature reserve rather than a garden, Camley Street Natural Park at King's Cross is ten minutes from St Pancras. Everything on this page except Kew and the Physic Garden belongs on our list of free things to do in London.
Frequently asked questions
Can you still visit the Kensington Roof Gardens?
Not as a member of the public. The gardens above the former Derry and Toms building on Kensington High Street stopped admitting the public in January 2018 and the site is now run as a private members' club. Many travel articles have not been updated, which is why people still turn up.
When is the Inner Temple Garden open to the public?
Usually on weekdays from 12.30pm to 3pm, excluding bank holidays, entering through the main gate opposite the Treasury Office on Crown Office Row. It closes in high winds, for private functions and for maintenance, and the Inn publishes closures on the garden's social media accounts.
Where is the secret garden in Regent's Park?
St John's Lodge Garden, reached through a small iron gate on the northern side of the Inner Circle near the park office. The lodge itself is a private house, but the Royal Parks confirm public access to the gardens, which were laid out in 1889 and hold several listed statues.
When is London Open Gardens 2027?
Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 June 2027. It is organised by London Parks and Gardens as a fundraising weekend, and one ticket covers all participating gardens across both days. More than 120 normally closed gardens took part in 2026. Check the organiser's website for the current ticket price.
Are London's garden squares open to visitors?
Some are and many are not. Large squares such as Russell Square and Lincoln's Inn Fields are public parks. Smaller squares are often private, maintained by the households around them and locked to everyone else. Look for posted opening hours; if there are none, assume it is private.
Sources
- The Inner Temple - Visiting the Garden (checked September 2026)
- The Royal Parks - St John's Lodge Garden (checked September 2026)
- The Phoenix Garden - Opening hours and about (checked September 2026)
- Bankside Open Spaces Trust - Red Cross Garden (checked September 2026)
- City of London Corporation - Find a City garden (checked September 2026)
- London Parks and Gardens - London Open Gardens (checked September 2026)