The Barbican Conservatory: The Hanging Gardens of EC1*

To the Barbican on a glorious early spring day when the sky was blue and the sun was warm. Chamberlin, Powell and Bon’s brutalist City enclave looks particularly wonderful on such a day, and the lakeside terraces were full of people soaking up the sun by the water.

But we were off to the Conservatory on the fourth floor of the Barbican Centre – above the theatre, above the art gallery – a glass-roofed and -walled garden that grows around the fly tower of the stage below.

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This is said to be the second-largest conservatory in London, after the Princess of Wales’s Conservatory at Kew. Although I can’t find any stats to support this – this might be one of those ‘facts’ that have become ‘true’ simply through repetition – it is an impressive space with around 2,000 plants growing between pools and ponds, reaching for the sky or tumbling down from the concrete gangways to the floors beneath.

It is a calming, restful and overwhelming green space, somewhere to sit and read a book for a couple of hours perhaps, or simply sit and stare into space to ‘reset’ from the stresses of urban life.

But (and I am pained to say this), as an ‘experience’ it’s a bit ‘meh’. Many of the plants seem to be simply supercharged versions of houseplants (although a nod of appreciation here for the 20’ tall yucca tree) and – it’s March, so perhaps things improve – there is a surprising lack of colour, other than green.

Four of us mooched about for half an hour, taking photos and looking at the plants, but none of us were convinced we’d make a special trip to do it again; “worth seeing, but not worth going to see” was the consensus.

Still, if you’re planning a visit to the Barbican, or a City of London tour, you should certainly look in and recharge your batteries. It is free to go, but you do need to book ahead (the link is here).