Kensington Roof Gardens

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Part of the Kensington Roof Gardens

The Roof Gardens (formerly known as Derry and Toms Roof Gardens and Kensington Roof Gardens) is a roof garden covering 6,000 m² (1.5 acres) on top of the former Derry and Toms building on Kensington High Street, in central London, near Kensington Gardens. The gardens – the largest roof garden in Europe – are accessible from Derry Street, through a doorway marked "99 Kensington High Street". The gardens are open to the public unless pre-booked by a private party. The gardens surround a two storey Clubhouse which hosts private events such as conferences and parties and a private members club for up to 600 guests open on Friday and Saturday nights, and are situated 30 metres (100 ft) above street level (on the 6th floor of the building) with a panoramic view over west London through windows in the walled edge.

The gardens were laid out between 1936 and 1938 by Ralph Hancock, a landscape architect, on the instructions of Trevor Bowen (then vice-president of Barkers, the Kensington department store giant that owned the site and constructed the building in 1932). The building housed the department store Derry and Toms until 1973, and then Biba until 1975. The Gardens has been listed as a Grade II site by the English Heritage in 1978.

The gardens are not visible from Kensington High Street, however the property can be identified by the Virgin flags flying from the top of the building.

It is divided into three themed gardens:

The Kensington Roof Gardens are barely visible from Kensington High Street.

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 two Chilean flamingos. There are over 30 different species of trees in the woodland garden, including trees from the original planting over sixty years ago, despite there being only a metre deep of soil in which to grow. Despite being on a rooftop, the trees were made the subject of tree preservation orders in 1976.

In 2001 Babylon Restaurant was built on the 7th floor of The Roof Gardens, which now operates as part of the property. Babylon is open Monday to Friday for lunch and Monday to Sunday for dinner. Guests can see the English Woodland Garden from the terrace, and the flamingo pond from the private dining room. Babylon offers view west from Richmond Deer Park all the way round across South London to City Point in the east.

The Roof Gardens have been owned by Sir Richard Branson since 1981, and is part of Virgin Limited Edition - the luxury portfolio of Virgin Hotels Group Ltd. The portfolio includes Necker Island, Kasbah Tamadot in Morocco, Ulusaba Private Game Reserve in South Africa, Sa Terra Rotja in Mallorca, The Lodge, Verbier in Switzerland, Moskito Island in the British Virgin Islands and Lady B, a luxury catamaran.

The nearest tube station is High Street Kensington.

[edit] The Roof Gardens in fiction

The Derry and Toms Roof Gardens are a significant and recurrent location in the Jerry Cornelius stories written by Michael Moorcock. They are the setting for the opening scenes of the second Cornelius novel, A Cure for Cancer (1971), where Jerry encounters a Westland Whirlwind helicopter firing on a party of tea-drinking old ladies in a satire on the (then contemporary) Vietnam war. The gardens also feature as the setting for a musical and dance extravaganza in Lorna Hill's "No castanets at the Wells". It is also the opening location in Moorcock's comic novel The Chinese Agent, featuring Jerry Cornell.

[edit] Image gallery

99 Kensington High Street entrance on Derry Street. The street-level entrance to the roof gardens.	One of the windows in the walled garden.	Plaque in the garden showing the founder of Barkers of Kensington	One of the pink flamingos that live in the gardens
A tent in the Spanish garden