The National Trust in London aims to support a fairer London by addressing unequal access to nature, beauty and history where people live. We’re doing this by improving existing green space, protecting cherished local heritage sites and supporting people to participate with green space and heritage on their own terms. Find out more about our projects across London below.
At the heart of the exhibition is a new body of photographic work commissioned by the National Trust from British-Congolese artist Bernice Mulenga, whose practice centres on documenting intimacy, community and collective memory. Their portraits capture the people behind the gardens - winners of the 2024 In Bloom competition across categories including: Best Newcomer, Cultivated Gardens and Gardens of the Future. Alongside these contemporary works are rarely seen archival photographs from the London Transport Museum reflect on the rich legacy of the iterations of the gardening competition, offering a visual journey through over 100 years of London’s gardening heritage.
Through Bernice’s photographs, interviews with gardeners, historic images and short films produced by the National Trust, the exhibition explores how gardening across London’s transport network supports wellbeing, communal belonging and supports people and planet in everyday public spaces.
Featured gardeners and stations include: Julia (Hainault), Marisa (formerly of Edgware Road), Ray and Azaz (South Tottenham), Hitendra (Wembley Park), Jack and the Northwick Park community gardeners - Jo, Eleri and Sarah as well as the team at Upminster Maintenance Depot: Peter, Bradley, Gary, Jonathan, David, Ronan, Terry, Christopher, Glenn, Stephan and Samuel. Also featured is Anthony of Morden station, whose story is shared in a short film produced by the National Trust.
The exhibition includes two short films produced by the National Trust and directed by Lee Barham. One features Anthony Samuel, Customer Service Manager at Morden station, reflecting on how gardening supports mental wellbeing. The other profiles Bernice Mulenga, offering insight into their creative practice and documentation of communities.
In Bloom was open at Seed 130 from 1 August to 30 September 2025.
Seed130 is led by CO-RE for Aviva Investors, with a design team including WilkinsonEyre and Arup. Curated by Futurecity in collaboration with key partners Invisible Dust and Eastern City Business Improvement District
About Seed130
Seed130 is a new temporary gallery space developed as part of the meanwhile activation for 130 Fenchurch Street. Curated by Futurecity, it hosts a 10-month programme of exhibitions, talks and performances exploring sustainability, ESG, and future thinking. Seed130 is led by CO–RE for Aviva Investors, with a design team including WilkinsonEyre and Arup. Curated by Futurecity in collaboration with key partners Invisible Dust and Eastern City Business Improvement District.
www.seed130.co.uk
IG: @_seed130
The Wandle Corridor is a 23.5km stretch of river and parkland weaving through South London, shared by neighbourhoods across Wandsworth, Merton, Sutton and Croydon. It is an area rich in Nature: including a rare chalk stream home to brown trout and kingfishers, and History: from medieval monasteries to the printing works of William Morris and Liberty. Today, it’s a thriving business and leisure area.
The National Trust is part of the Wandle Valley Regional Park Trust (WVRPT), a charity established in 2013 by nine organisations interested in protecting and enhancing this unique area: the London Boroughs of Wandsworth, Merton, Sutton and Croydon, the Environment Agency, Natural England, South East Rivers Trust, the National Trust, and the Wandle Valley Forum, which represent more than 150 community groups and voluntary organisations with a shared passion for the Wandle.
The aim of the charity is to provide the leadership and coordination of a sub-regional partnership and improve the effectiveness, coherence, resilience and quality of the Wandle Valley.
These partners are developing a new joint initiative to protect and enhance the River Wandle, its greenspaces and the Wandle Trail; to maintain and increase the multiple benefits they provide for People and Nature; and ensure that these expand, by connecting the Wandle to other greenspaces and their local communities across the Wandle Valley.
A number of projects in different locations will contribute to the delivery of this vision.
Repairs to the Merton Priory Precinct Wall completed
In the centre of Colliers Wood, surrounded by busy retail parks, there is a small wedge of green space that has been nicknamed Pickle Park after the Pickle Ditch, a small stream which frames the green space to the east before joining the Wandle underneath Merton Bridge.
Owned by the National Trust, Pickle Park spans 500sqm and is home to the longest surviving section of the 14th century Merton Priory Precinct Wall.
Our ambition is to turn this currently inaccessible area into a riverside pocket park that will provide access to both the medieval wall and nature-rich greenspace.
The project team was supported by the GLA’s Green and Resilient Spaces Fund to deliver extensive surveys and studies of the area and an initial community consultation, which was carried out by local young people, coordinated by Living Proof. This process allowed us to understand what Merton residents want from their local greenspaces and co-create initial concept designs for what the park could become.
Watch this short video to learn more about the role of the young people in the consultation and co-design process. Working with Youth Consultants at Pickle Park
Meanwhile, work has also been undertaken, with the support of the Heritage of London Trust to rebuild two sections of the Precinct Wall that had unfortunately collapsed.
The repair works have been completed in 2025 and our priority is now to protect the Wall and this pocket of urban greenspace, while we look for funding opportunities that can enable us to progress the vision for Pickle Park.
For 2024 and 2025, we have been amplifying the festival of Blossom across London by working with partners to deliver a series of special activities and pop-ups. 2025 saw the launch of an interactive platform for urban growing called Glitch, as well as hosting a series of events at the National Park City pop up on Moritmer Street.
We also collaborated with Transport for London during the Blossom 2024 to create two pop-up gardens - one at Highbury & Islington station and another at Hounslow Bus Garage - created using recycled oil drums and planted with blossom trees, these mini urban gardens also feature colourful plants chosen with pollinators in mind. The planters have now become permanent features at the stations, helping to support urban biodiversity and brighten commuters’ journeys across the capital.
The collaboration will continue this through 2025, with more permanent garden spaces set to be announced soon.
As part of this collaboration, we also visited Morden station to talk to Anthony Samuel, Customer Service Manager, to find out about the station garden he's created and how plants can have a positive effect on mental health.
Stoneford Community Garden is a 0.5-acre garden for the residents of the Leys Estate and nearby communities in East Dagenham, which first opened in 2022. Now run in partnership with Well Social CIC, local residents have been helping to look after nature in the garden, cultivating new plants and wildlife and developing the space so it feels safer, more accessible and welcoming for the community.
There is a weekly programme of fun activities for families and young people, plus volunteering days for people to get involved in.
Follow @StonefordCommunityGardenNT on Facebook or @StonefordNT on Instagram for updates.
Octavia Hill, one of the National Trust's founders, had a strong connection to Lewisham, having fought to save Sayes Court for public use in 1884. She believed that access to nature should be for everyone, for ever.
We have been working with a coalition of organisations in Lewisham – including DeptfordFolk, Lewisham Council, Everest, local Tenants and Residents Associations for the Pepys Estate, to develop a ‘Greenspace Toolkit’ for Evelyn Ward. The plan looks at how green spaces can be created, enhanced and managed with communities, for communities.
One of the projects within the Toolkit is the Sayes Court Garden Network project, which is seeking to help more people access and use the green spaces on the Sayes Court Estate. A copy of the Toolkit is available here.
Find out more about Greening Evelyn with this short film: Greening Evelyn vision
We’ve also partnered with Street Trees for Living to support their ambitious work to plant blossom trees throughout the borough. Over 300 trees have been planted since 2020, with more planned.
“We all want quiet. We all want beauty. We all need space. Unless we have it we cannot reach that sense of quiet in which whispers of better things come to us gently.”
One of 8 city-based collaborations within the pioneering Future Parks Accelerator, Camden and Islington Borough Councils have been working together since 2019, alongside the National Trust and National Lottery Heritage Fund, to reduce barriers that prevent people from using parks. They’ve been developing new health and wellbeing offers in parks, including partnering with public health teams, GPs, the Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise sector and NHS commissioners around green social prescribing. Together they’ve created the Camden and Islington Parks for Health strategy 2022-2030.
Building on this successful initiative, we are working with the boroughs as they embark on an ambitious grey to green retrofit programme to turn hundreds of ‘stub’ roads into new pocket parks and orchards, as well as finding ways to integrate green infrastructure (such as sustainable drainage) into the development of their roads and pavements. In Islington alone, their plans equate to roughly 6 hectares of new green space (that’s an additional 10% of the area of their current parks) and could significantly reduce green deficit at a neighbourhood level, reduce flood risk, increase wellbeing and social benefits.
2016
In July 2016, the National Trust in London explored the contemporary heritage of Croydon and cast a spotlight on the borough as one of the most important examples of the post-war ambition to build a new society. The project's aim was to challenge perceptions of heritage as country houses and coastlines, and celebrate the places where people live, work and play.
Our key partner: The Mayor of London is responsible for making London a better place for everyone who visits, lives or works in the city.
An award winning group, founded to improve Deptford Park and Folkestone Gardens.
London’s independent heritage charity, set up in 1980 by the Greater London Council to rescue historic buildings and monuments.
An award-winning charity working with residents to transform urban areas with street trees, to improve the environment of the London Borough of Lewisham & beyond.
Images and videos from across London, with all of the latest project updates.
All of the latest updates from each of our projects across London.
From intimate spaces and modernist masterpieces to thriving wetlands and sprawling estates, London has it all for dreamy days out if you know where to look this autumn.
