Tag: RHS Chelsea Medal

The Exchange, Walnut Tree Road, Erith

One autumn Saturday morning in 2024 my companion and I visited the Sarah Price-designed garden at The Exchange in Erith, South-East London and we were in for a treat.

As Erith Library for over 100 years, and Grade II-listed, this Carnegie-financed building of 1906 finally closed its doors in 2009, thus becoming an unused space with unkept grounds. Two visionary locals, respectively with conservation and community arts experience, approached Bexley Council in 2016. Their initiative resulted in a community arts hub which opened in 2022 – a refurbished building with a new garden to match. 

Mediterranean front garden
Mediterranean front garden

The garden surrounds the building on all sides, with various plantings complementing each of the four different areas. The forefront of the building has become a Mediterranean garden with a tapestry of lime-greens, blue-greens and greys. In amongst the herbaceous and shrubs I noticed Myrtle, Euphorbias, Irises, California poppies and particular favourites, sub-shrub Dorycnium hirsutum and several Hesperaloe parviflora (red yucca), a very choice succulent that I have at home (and managed to keep alive!). On our visit we noticed that flowering was just finishing, with its tall stem of red-orange pendulum flowers just going over.

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Florence Nightingale Garden

I’m sure we can all remember the particular joy that gardens gave us during the dark days of lockdown. Gardeners of course have always known the benefits that green spaces can bring.

This fact was brought home to me recently when I spent time in the Florence Nightingale Garden at St Thomas’s Hospital, Southwark – happily as a guest, not a patient or loved-one of a patient.  The theme of the garden is ‘nurture through nature’.

Florence Nightingale Garden


The archivist in me loved the fact that enlarged extracts from Florence Nightingale’s letters in which she campaigned for healthcare reform featured in the original design, printed onto the boundary walls and overlaid with images of her pressed flower collection.

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