Our magicaL vertical garden...

So why have we installed a colossal Vertical Garden up the side of The Athenaeum? Yes, aesthetically it echoes Green Park, over the road. Yes, it provides an important haven of biodiversity for the capital. But primarily, it’s just fun. We love it.

SPECTACULAR SEASONS

It’s a fairytale dream of a wall, erupting with trailing tendrils and flowers eight storeys high above Piccadilly’s red buses like a living tapestry. As well as hosting native plants and flowers, way down below beside our Garden Room there’s the world’s biggest collection of non-nettly-looking nettles – or Urticaccae, to those in the know. This humid microclimate is the perfect spot for the more exotic species. Brush up on your Latin with our list of living wall plants.

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  PATRICK BLANC

  The man behind our living wall is the award-winning artist and research scientist Patrick Blanc. He’s on a mission to transform concrete walls into beautiful havens of biodiversity. His famous Vertical Gardens hang all over the world, from Bangkok to Paris, New York to Tokyo… and now London. His first in the UK.
  So how does he do it? Click here to find out.