How the Square Mile is coming into bloom.

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 An upside-down meadow.

One of the more underrated things to do in London is walking (or, even better, cycling) the streets and alleys of its Square Mile after dark or at the weekend. The City, that controversial hub of towering steel and glass, is deserted when all of the suits have gone home, a kind of windy urban ghost town one can feel temporarily becomes their own.

Beyond the enormous skyscrapers named after everyday objects (hi, Cheesegrater. Forthcoming: the Scapel), the Square Mile is also home to dozens of gardens, many of which are easily hidden during the week by pubs, office blocks and people sitting on their benches eating Pret sandwiches.
These have provided ripe inspiration for artists and writers such as Dickens over the centuries, including, most recently, artist Rebecca Louise Law, who has chosen 34 of her favourite City gardens to represent in the debut exhibition at The City Centre - a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it public space near the Guildhall.

An upside-down meadow 

Law, who is known for her work creating natural art installations (and, fittingly, has a studio on Columbia Road), has suspended more than 30,000 freshly cut flowers and blooms from the ceiling for her new show, The City Garden. I went a few days ago and it looked like a surreal, upside-down meadow.
Arguably, however, the smell was more overwhelming, a giddy, heady hum of petals and pollen. Both will fade over the next five month, as they are intended to - the flowers will dry and fade over time, bringing something new to visitors on a daily basis.

The show offers visitors a map of the gardens that Law has reflected with their own patch of ceiling, as well as an app to guide you around them, from the well-known Postman’s Park, where Victorian tiles pay tribute to acts of heroic sacrifice, to the hidden historical find of The Barbers’ Physic Garden and even the in-progress London Wall Place, which promises to bring a Highline-style experience to London Wall.
To do the whole lot properly would take you half a day, perhaps on one of those Sundays when all the bankers have gone home.
But I managed to stumble across four on my way to catch the bus, including two former graveyards on Cornhill belonging to St Peter’s and St Michael churches, and accessed through tiny alleyways to Dickensian-looking pubs. Just footsteps away from the after-work pavement pints, there was enough space to catch the early evening Spring sunshine.

The City Garden, open and free to the public between Monday and Saturday, 10:00 – 17:00, until September 25.

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