Richmond Parks and Gardens

.Richmond Parks and Gardens

 Question: ‘What do you get when you cross an English Village with a Great City?’

Answer: ‘Richmond’

Beside the River Thames in West London has always been a fabulous place to live, to garden and to sojourn. The river is gentle; the landscape is soft and beautiful; the gardens are accessible by riverboat, riverside paths and hired bicycles. Or you can use taxis, busses and trains. If the world has a more desirable urban residential area than riverside West London, we have yet to hear of it. The houses are grand; the gardens are wonderful; there is a greater acreage/person of parkland than anywhere else in London. Richmond provides a totally different experience to Central London. Rudyard Kipling asked ‘what know they of England who only England know?’ We ask: ‘what know they of London who know not Richmond?’

We recommend ‘after breakfast’, instead of ‘after dinner’ but you can have an experience much like that enjoyed by the famous diarist, John Evelyn, in 1678: ‘After dinner I walked to Ham to see the house and garden of the Duke of Lauderdale. The house is furnished like a great Prince’s, the Parterres, Flower Gardens, Orangeries, Groves, Avenues, Courts, Statues, Perspectives, Fountains, Aviaries and all this at the banks of the sweetest river in the world’. After walking back to Richmond for lunch beside ‘the sweetest river’, you can take river boats to the greatest botanical garden in all the world (Kew) and the favoured riverside garden palace of the Tudors and the House of Orange (Hampton Court). All this can be done with 2 nights in Richmond, but an extra night would let you fit include a third boat trip: to Westminster.