500 years of Covent Garden

‘500 Years of Covent Garden’ will be designed by award-winning garden designer Lee Bestall to showcase the area’s rich horticultural heritage. The garden celebrates Covent Garden’s early roots as a fruit orchard until the 16th century and later as a flower market, as well as the iconic architecture it is known for today, including the Market Building.

The Show Garden is sponsored by Capco, the landowner and steward of Covent Garden, in partnership with the Sir Simon Milton Foundation, the Westminster based charity which champions opportunities for young and old. In celebration of the close long-standing relationship between the partners, the subject matter for the garden was chosen to provide a unique space reflective of the neighbourhood, past and present.

The central feature will include a mature, 60 year-old apple tree, harking back not only to the early beginnings of ‘Convent Garden’ as an orchard, belonging to and supplying the monk’s table at Westminster Abbey, but also to the 300 year-old provenance of the neighbourhood as a fruit and flower market. Flowering herbaceous plants will reflect the colours of apple blossom and large steel structures will reflect the distinctive arches of Covent Garden’s Grade II listed Market Building.

Reclaimed cobble pathways will guide visitors into the centre of the garden, just as the surrounding streets do into Covent Garden’s Piazza. A central seating area, paved with reclaimed York stone, provides a place to sit and relax, inspired by the social and modern dining environment of the Piazza which, as London’s first public square, was designed to bring people together.

Plant list

Perennials

Shrubs

Hedging

Trees