London (Central) – Sky Garden

Our visit here was part of Steve’s trip to London and the component parts of the day were mostly kept as a secret to surprise us. When he told us that we were visiting a garden I made clear how unexcited I was, expecting that I’d be looking at some silly little planting effort.

So, it’s fair to say that I was pleased when we got to 20 Fenchurch Street, which is better known as the Walkie Talkie. There are free tickets available to the three storey garden at the top of the building, and Steve had obtained these for us.

The Sky Garden isn’t provided by the generosity of the landlord, it’s a requirement of the planning process as this skyscraper wouldn’t normally have been allowed to be built where it is. It seems that there is some controversy about how much effort has been made with the gardens which spread across three floors, but I still think that they look impressive.

I thought it was an interesting and exciting experience, with the views over the city being extensive (more of which in a separate post). There’s a security process to get into the tower where bags are checked in an airport style arrangement, but this didn’t take too long.

For anyone who fancies hiring the entire gardens, it’s a bargain, just £35,000 per day plus VAT, and a minimum spend of £25,000 plus VAT for catering.