Buckingham Palace: A Royal Garden

Hidden behind the high walls surrounding Buckingham Palace is one of London’s most beautiful gardens, the venue for a busy calendar of royal events, including the much-loved tradition of The Queen’s Garden Party.

Award-winning photographer John Campbell has spent a year taking pictures of that garden for this richly illustrated book, revealing the changes that occur through the seasons, as massed bulbs give way to the roses of high summer and the turning trees of autumn. The text, by gardening writer Claire Masset, follows a year in the life of the royal garden, and is full of insights and practical tips from the Head Gardener, Mark Lane.

Enlivened by royal anecdote, the book reveals the skills of the gardeners who have tended these London acres over the centuries and the tastes and keen horticultural interests of successive monarchs, such as James I whose campaign to introduce silk production to Britain was the inspiration for Buckingham Palace’s National Collection of Mulberries.

Today this hidden oasis in the centre of London is home to an increasingly diverse array of flora and fauna, including the royal beehives located on an island in the garden’s 3.5-acre lake, and is a source of ideas and inspiration for every gardener, equally applicable to a homely plot as to the garden of a royal palace.

About the Author:

Claire Masset is the author of the bestselling Secret Gardens of the National Trust, as well as a handful of other books on gardens and social history. She currently works as publisher for the National Trust; she writes and gardens in her spare time. Her journalism has appeared in Country Life, BBC Homes & Antiques, Gardens Illustrated, Art Quarterly, and The English Garden magazine. She recently won the Roger Deakin Award from the Society of Authors.

Claire has degrees in art and architectural history from St Andrews and Oxford. Born and raised in France, she now lives in West Oxfordshire with her son and two cats. Follow her on Twitter @ClaireMasset or Instagram @clairesmasset