At 1.5 miles long and about a mile wide, Hyde Park is one of the largest of London's Royal Parks. The Joy of Life fountain is a popular spot for splashing around in when the weather heats up. Read more.
The Serpentine Gallery, the sunken garden and the beautiful flower walk provide alluring ways to while away a sunny afternoon. Read more.
Wild and undulating, the grassy sprawl of Hampstead Heath makes a wonderfully untamed contrast to the manicured lawns and flowerbeds found elsewhere in the capital. Read more.
Regent's Park is one of the city's most popular open spaces, covering 410 acres. Attractions run from the animal odours and noises of London Zoo to the enchanting Open Air Theatre. Read more.
St James's Park was founded as a deer park for the royal occupants of St James's Palace, and remodelled by John Nash on the orders of George IV. Read more.
Greenwich Park offers a wide range of facilities and points of interest, including a child-friendly boating lake, six tennis courts and the National Maritime Museum just on the perimeter. Read more.
The green, triangle-shaped expanse of leafy land just beyond the Ritz is Green Park. Read more.
Clapham Common provides an oasis of peace amid the busy traffic of south west London. A number of cafés, sporting facilities, two playgrounds and a skate park make it a lively recreational facility. Read more.
Richmond Park is the largest of the Royal Parks, occupying some 2,500 acres. From the park's highest point, there are unobstructed views of St Paul's Cathedral, over 12 miles in the distance. Read more.
Situated just north of Hampton Court Palace, Bushy Park is one of several vast open spaces that sprawl across the borough of Richmond-upon-Thames. There's a children's playground and café on-site. Read more.
Kew Gardens is a magnificent World Heritage Site covering 300 acres with over 30,000 species of plants. Read more.
Founded in 1673, Chelsea Physic Garden contains England's oldest rock garden. It's open Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday and bank holiday afternoons from April to October. Read more.
The Isabella Plantation consists of clearings, ponds and streams and is planted with ferns, exotic trees and shrubs. Read more.
Walled gardens have been on this site since the late 1600s but the once grand kitchen garden lay neglected from the 1920s until it was rediscovered a few years ago. Read more.
Terrace walks, a formal lawn and a sunken rose garden grace the northern part of this garden, which adjoins a seventeenth-century merchant’s house. Read more.
This stunning art deco house was built in 1936. The 19-acre garden really comes into its own during summer, when the long border transforms into a riot of herbaceous perennials. Read more.
The Geffrye’s ‘garden rooms’ illustrate changing planting styles across half a millennium, from modest designs for Elizabethan townhouses to hothouse exotics loved by the Victorians. Read more.
If you can locate one of the grubby alleyways leading to the Phoenix Garden, it's a lovely little green spot to have a quiet breather away. Volunteers maintain the plants, flowers and wildlife. Read more.
A favourite of local artists, this formal Arts and Crafts garden is a little-known part of Hampstead Heath. Visit during the early evening and you might see roosting long-eared bats. Read more.
