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.
We’ve collaborated with TfL to install a pop-up garden outside Highbury and Islington station. Created using a group of recycled oil drums planted with blossom trees, this mini urban garden also features colourful plants chosen with pollinators in mind, including aquilegia and geraniums. Students from the local William Tyndale Primary School will be taking place in workshops inspired by the garden. It's in place from 10 – 18 May, after which the planters will be moved to the station platform so they can continue to be enjoyed.
As part of this collaboration, we've 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 opened in 2022. Local residents have been helping us look after nature in the garden as well as 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.”
An emerging collaboration across boroughs to enhance the existing green corridor formed by the Wandle River and the Wandle Trail. The ambition is to create an inclusive, accessible and nature rich corridor for the benefit of people and nature.
There will be a number of projects that help achieve this ambition.
With the support of the Greater London Authority, work has already begun on one of these projects, in the area known as Pickle Park. The park is named after Pickle Ditch, a small stream which comes off the River Wandle in Colliers Wood near Phipps Bridge and rejoins the Wandle underneath Merton Bridge.
The park covers 500 square metres, with the 12th century Merton Priory Precinct Wall running through it. We want to create a new riverside green space in this currently inaccessible area to provide access to the medieval wall and to a new, nature rich, green space.
Rangers and volunteers from nearby Morden Hall Park have cleared a huge jumble of brambles in this small park so that we can carry out the surveys necessary to design the park. This will follow an initial consultation with residents and local community organisations carried out in October-November 2022 to understand what people want from their local green spaces.
The careful restoration of the medieval wall is also underway, thanks to the support from the Heritage of London Trust, including public activities and events that celebrate and bring local history and archaeology to life.
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, if you know where to look.