Sarah Price – Charlton and Blackheath Amateur Horticultural Society

A visit to the Old English Garden in Battersea Park

Pergola cathedral.
Old English Garden, Battersea Park, July 2025

A group of enthusiastic members visited the Old English Garden in Battersea Park last weekend, led by Ruth, who worked there for Thrive, during the period during which it was transformed from a rather overgrown historic site to an award winning and inspirational garden reimagined by a well-known designer.

The original garden was designed by JJ Sexby in the early 1900s and renovated a couple of times in the 1960s and 1980s, during which the lily pond was drained and filled with bedding schemes, the hard landscaping changed to crazy paving and then to the current brick pavers, and the splendid Wisteria pergola deteriorated.

Old English Garden with sundial and Wisteria pergola. Battersea Park, July 2025

Old English Garden. Battersea Park, July 2025

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.

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.

My other (sort of) walled garden

In a previous life when I worked for garden charity Thrive*, I was involved in replanting the Old English Garden in Battersea Park and last week I and a former colleague went back to see how it is looking now, some 10 years later.

Although it has a similar feel and look to the Old Pond Garden, it is only walled on one side, but it does still have a large pond in the middle, which is full of water lilies in the summer – spot the heron !

Pond in Old English Garden in Battersea Park

Much of the funding was provided by Jo Malone London (JML) and many of the plants are those used in their fragrances including lilies, rhubarb, pomegranate, jasmine and, of course, roses. Some replanting has been done in the intervening period and it continues to be well maintained and supported by JML, volunteers and Thrive gardeners.