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.
The River Wandle is a 23.5km long chalk stream weaving through South London, shared by neighbourhoods across Wandsworth, Merton, Sutton and Croydon. The river flows along and across a ribbon of parks and green spaces and is followed by a walking and cycling Trail connecting Croydon to the Thames. These spaces make up the Wandle Valley Regional Park.
The area is rich in nature; with rare chalk stream habitat for brown trout and kingfishers, and steeped in history, from medieval monasteries to the printing works of William Morris and Liberty. From the 17th to 19th centuries, the Wandle was one of the most heavily industrialised rivers in the country, powering up to 68 water wheels. Today, it’s a thriving business, residential and leisure area and home to National Trust’s Morden Hall Park.
With £650,000 of funding from the Mayor of London, the National Trust is working with the London Boroughs of Croydon, Sutton, Merton, and Wandsworth, the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust, South East Rivers Trust, Living Proof, Wandle Valley Forum, the Environment Agency and Wandle Valley Regional Park Trust to enhance the Wandle Trail and improve access to the River Wandle and its connected green spaces. By engaging with local communities and young people, we will also shape the long-term vision and plan for the Wandle Valley Regional Park.
Watch this space for more updates as the project progresses and ways to get involved or follow along @nationaltrustlondon
Aged 16-25? Visit LIVING PROOF to apply to be a youth consultant!
Repairs to the Merton Priory Precinct Wall completed
Pickle Park and the Merton Priory Wall
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 flowing next to it.
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. Thanks to the support of the Heritage of London Trust, two sections of the Precinct Wall that had collapsed have been rebuilt.
Support from the GLA’s Green and Resilient Spaces Fund also enabled extensive surveys and studies of the area, as well as an initial community consultation which was carried out by local young people and explored what Merton residents want from their local greenspaces. This consultation led to the co-creation of initial concept designs for a revitalised pocket park.
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
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 spring.
