The Roof Gardens (formerly known as Derry and Toms Roof Gardens and Kensington Roof Gardens) is a roof garden covering 6000 m2 (1.5 acres) on top of the former Derry & Toms building on Kensington High Street, in central London, in The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Since early January 2018 it is closed as Virgin Limited Edition, the most recent leaseholder, couldn't reach an agreement with the freeholder about renewal of the lease.
Video Kensington Roof Gardens
History
Derry and Toms new Art Deco department store was opened in 1933. The gardens were laid out between 1936 and 1938 by Ralph Hancock, a landscape architect who had just created the "Gardens of the Nations" on the 11th floor of the RCA building in New York, on the instructions of Trevor Bowen (then vice-president of Barkers, the department store giant that owned the site and constructed the building). They cost £25,000 to create and visitors were charged 1 shilling to enter. Money raised was donated to local hospitals and £120,000 was raised during the next 30 years.
The building housed the department store Derry and Toms until 1973, and then Biba until 1975. In 1978, the garden's Art Deco tea pavilion was redeveloped into a nightclub, in 1981 Virgin Limited Edition bought the lease to the roof garden and the pavilion, and in 2001 Virgin turned the pavilion into the Babylon restaurant.
The more than 100 trees in the garden were given a tree preservation order by the Kensington & Chelsea council in 1976, the roof garden buildings were Grade II* listed by English Heritage in 1981 as part of a listing given the whole building, and the garden itself was given a Grade II listing in 1998 within the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
Virgin ceased its operations of the Roof Gardens in January 2018 and the site is currently closed to the public. It is unknown when it will reopen.
Maps Kensington Roof Gardens
The gardens
It is divided into three themed gardens:
- a Spanish garden, in a Moorish style based upon the Alhambra in Spain, with fountains, vine-covered walkways and Chusan palms;
- a Tudor style garden, characterised by its archways, secret corners and hanging wisteria. Roses, lilies and lavender contribute the rich summer scent to the garden;
- an English woodland garden, with over 100 species of trees, a stream, and a garden pond that is the home to pintail ducks and four flamingos called Bill, Ben, Splosh and Pecks. There are over 30 different species of trees in the woodland garden, including trees from the original planting over sixty years ago, despite having only a metre of soil in which to grow. Although they are on a rooftop, the trees were made the subject of tree preservation orders in 1976.
Gallery
Notes
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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