July 2026 Update
The Onion Garden was (as you might have gathered from the original 2023 post below) one of my favourite places in the city. I’d started going there pre-covid, when it occupied a fraction of the space and the coffee shop was a lean-to.
So it was enormously depressing to see this Instagram post from ‘Chief Onion’ Jens announcing the ‘termination of our tenancy’. This was obviously as sudden as it was unexpected, as the previous post had announced a forthcoming event to be held at the garden, and Jens’s photo was part of the London Heritage Quarter’s summer promotion.
This was a place that was an unalloyed good, a nondescript corner of a back street that had transformed into a peaceful green wonderland. The people responsible for the eviction of the onions deserves the curses of ten million Londoners.
But there is a glimmer of light. The Onion Garden is hoping to cast its magic on another spot in Westminster and have started a GoFundMe to help (and, if necessary, to fight to reclaim their property from the usurpers).
Give what you can and help bring something wonderful back to the city.
Original post
The long highway of Victoria Street has to be one of the most second rate walking routes in the whole of the city. There is Westminster Cathedral – John Francis Bentley’s glorious late 19th reimagining of the Byzantine Hagia Sophia – and the far off prospect of the Abbey, but generally the street is concrete and glass shop fronts and office receptions; there is little architectural merit and even less to inspire or uplift.
But as you pass Westminster City Hall dive off the main drag down a walkway called Seaforth Place and (after navigating a small access road) you alight upon The Onion Garden, one of the absolute ‘hidden gems’ of Westminster.
It is the brainchild and passion of Jens Jakobsen, ‘The Danish Florist’, who has transformed an abandoned urban corner into a beautiful garden. This has recently expanded, and has now become a ‘Community Interest Company’ (basically a charitable company, one that exists for the community not for profit).
They’re on Instagram (you’ll find them here), and their bio says it all really “Bringing community and nature together. A welcoming space open to all for love and laughter, healing & wellbeing.”
There’s also a rather excellent coffee stall (and even wifi), making the garden the perfect spot for me to either take ten minutes to mentally prepare for a job, or a bit more time to decompress after one.
Victoria – London – is a better place for The Onion Garden, and we should give thanks to Jens and his volunteers for carving out this fantastic bit of rus in urbe.
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