Battersea Park: then and now

Battersea is one of my favourite London parks, dating back to when I first saw the Pogues play there in the mid-1980's, when it was more of a fun-fair-and-festival type of park in those years pre-gentrifcation. Then years later I lived up the hill and it was my refuge and escape and the destination for many a dogwalk. It's still a gem to rival those big green spaces North of the river: Regents Park, Primrose Hill, Kensington Gardens and Hampstead Heath.
I always like to drop in when I'm passing through and I went to see Dan Pearson's new winter garden there. It's so freshly planted that it was a little eclipsed by the surrounding froth of bluebells, tulips and newly green trees. A winter garden is at its best when there is no competition really. But it's great that Battersea has commissioned some new design and planting that doesn't hark back to it's Victorian heyday.
But I think that come next January, this latest planting of his in London will be a welcome refuge, with lots of hellebores, ferns and woodland delights nestling at the foot of some 20-odd white-stemmed birches and a cluster of wonderfully bent and twisted stems of some old lime trees that look as if they have been there for years - perhaps they have? I don't really want to think ahead to next winter already, but at least this gives me something to look forward to when the bleak days come round again.
Dan has been writing eloquently (as ever) about his ex-garden in Peckham and about green oases in the city these past few weeks. It's obviously a chance to plug his new book, but he does sound a little wistful for a small patch of urban green now that he has moved to Somerset and is surrounded acres of countryside. Ah well, I won't feel sorry for him, but thank him for leaving with a flourish of public planting..

A night at the Museum

I went to the Garden Museum last night for a sneak preview of the photos in Dan Pearson's gorgeous new book.
The museum has become a vibrant hub for gardening glitterati, repositioning itself a la V&A, with less emphasis on the artefacts and more on looking at design, and gardens, today. I like what they're doing. It's a great space, the Vista talks are stimulating, the changing exhibitions are thoughtfully put together ("The Good Life...100 years of Growing Your Own" is coming soon and sounds like it will be a fun trawl through the archives). But it's a shame the lovely old tools, seed packets and gardening clogs have been hidden away upstairs like an eccentric aunt.
Still, saw some lovely photos from the book - I loved the ones of community gardens in New York, Japan and our own Bonnington Square in Vauxhall. Were they the first guerilla gardeners in London?