The Royal Parks charity, responsible for managing eight of London’s most iconic green spaces, has unveiled a new five-year horticultural strategy aimed at transforming parkland with climate-resilient, disease-resistant, and drought-tolerant plants. The initiative seeks to address the challenges posed by climate change while enhancing biodiversity and encouraging greater public engagement with nature.
The eight royal parks—Hyde Park, Green Park, Regent’s Park, St James’s Park, Kensington Gardens, Richmond Park, Bushy Park, and Greenwich Park—cover approximately 5,000 acres across the capital. The strategy prioritizes sustainable planting schemes that can withstand prolonged summer droughts and intense winter rainfall characteristic of London’s evolving climate.
One of the flagship projects involves revamping Hyde Park’s rose garden by replacing existing varieties with more than 500 Rosa persica plants, native to Iran and the Middle East. These roses are notable for their resilience in desert-like conditions and their accessibility to pollinators due to their single, scented flowers. The project aims to create the largest public display of Rosa persica in the UK, improving biodiversity while delivering a visually striking floral arrangement. Traditional lawn areas that suffered during recent heatwaves will be replaced with permanent beds featuring multiple varieties of Rosa persica alongside companion plants.
The Royal Parks team plans to introduce bold and experimental species, particularly in warmer microclimates such as central London’s parks. For example, Kensington Gardens recently saw successful transplantation of Australian native plants like bottlebrushes, mimosas, and kangaroo paws, which have attracted notable visitor interest. In Green Park, planting a wide band of blue-flowering camassias this autumn will symbolically trace the course of the long-lost River Tyburn, now redirected underground, thereby highlighting the park’s historical landscape.
In Regent’s Park, Queen Mary’s Gardens will transition from older hybrid tea roses that historically required frequent chemical treatments to more robust, disease-resistant varieties developed in collaboration with David Austin Roses. Selected cultivars such as ‘Emma Bridgewater’ and ‘Lady of Shalott’ aim to maintain a traditional aesthetic while thriving without extensive pesticide use.
The overarching approach favors permanent planting over the conventional use of bedding plants, which are typically replaced biannually. This shift is expected to improve soil health by minimizing disturbance to beneficial fungal networks crucial to soil ecosystems. Furthermore, many traditional bedding plants offer limited resources for pollinators, whereas the new plantings are designed to support a wider range of insects year-round.
Matthew Pottage, head of horticulture and landscape strategy at the Royal Parks, noted the challenge of “plant blindness,” where people overlook the plant life around them. By showcasing unusual or visually striking species, the project hopes to encourage visitors to engage more deeply with nature and inspire further interest in gardening and conservation.
The plan includes introducing species once considered exotic but now well-suited to London’s climate, such as palms and echiums from the Canary Islands, set to be planted in St James’s Park this winter.
The Royal Parks charity is actively seeking donations to support this ambitious horticultural vision. Officials hope the project will serve as a model for other public green spaces across the UK, promoting more sustainable and climate-adaptive planting practices nationwide.