Qualla: Buckingham Palace Garden

Buckingham Palace Garden: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KJP1, CC BY-SA 4.0. Napoleon had the vase prepared to commemorate victories he intended to win. It is fifteen feet high and carved from a single piece of Carrara marble — presented unfinished to the Prince Regent in 1815, a slightly awkward diplomatic gift after Waterloo, since the marble had been destined for a French monument. George IV had the base completed by Richard Westmacott and intended the urn to be the centrepiece of the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. The floor would not hold it. The National Gallery took it next, returned it in 1906 to Edward VII, and there it sits to this day, on the grass behind Buckingham Palace, the largest private garden in London arranged around an object too heavy for any room in any palace to bear.

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Image: KJP1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Buckingham Palace Garden: Behind the Wall

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KJP1, CC BY-SA 4.0. The garden covers 39 acres — the largest private garden in London — surrounded by a high wall and screened by trees from St James's Park to the east and Constitution Hill to the north. Most of the people who walk past Buckingham Palace will never see it. Eight full-time gardeners...

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Image: KJP1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Buckingham Palace Garden: Three Royal Garden Parties

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ViWu, Public domain. Three garden parties are held at Buckingham Palace each summer, plus one at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. About 30,000 guests attend in total — a number that recovered in 2022 after a two-year pandemic pause. The tradition is Victorian: lavish parties in 1887 and 1897...

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Image: ViWu | Public domain

Buckingham Palace Garden: The Lake, the Bees, the Vanished Flamingos

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Honbicot at English Wikipedia., Public domain. The lake is four hundred feet long and a hundred and fifty across. It was once home to a colony of flamingos, until they were killed by urban foxes — a small London tragedy that no garden wall, however high, has been able to prevent. The water used to be piped in from the Serpent...

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Image: The original uploader was Honbicot at English Wikipedia. | Public domain

Buckingham Palace Garden: The Summerhouse and the Coade Stone

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KJP1, CC BY-SA 4.0. Opposite the Waterloo Vase stands a small temple-like summerhouse, with a pediment supported by four atlantes — male figures bearing the entablature on their shoulders. The structure was originally in the Admiralty garden at the other end of The Mall and was relocated to Buckingh...

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Image: KJP1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Buckingham Palace Garden: What the Critics Said

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frederick Sargent, Public domain. Not everyone is impressed. Simon Bradley, in the 2003 revised Pevsner volume on Westminster, called the garden "beautiful," noting the "irregular lake and artful Picturesque planting." A writer in Country Life took a sharper view, suggesting that no major designer had been employ...

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Image: Frederick Sargent | Public domain