22 September | Regents Park

Went for a semi-accidental six-mile run today. I remember passing Regents Park when I first arrived—my wonderfully chatty cabbie from the train station pointed it out, saying athat it was some of the most expensive real estate in all of London. It looked like a nice green space as we sped by, so today I checked it out on Google maps and it looked like it was about 2 miles to get there from my flat. But I realized once I ran all that way that I hadn’t taken into account that the park is HUGE! I have never been to New York, but I imagine that Regents Park is on the scale of Central Park. In any case, I think it is the biggest park in London. This isn’t like the little 3-block green spaces or neighborhood playgrounds that are sprinkled around American cities. It went on for miles.

I checked out the map at the entrance and was amazed by all the park had to offer: about 18 football fields, 3 American football fields, a zoo, several restaurants, large expanses of lawn and gardens. I decided to head for “Queen Anne’s Garden,” figuring that if it was for a Queen, it better be a nice spot. I turned down a broad gravel avenue, perfectly straight and lined with trees and benches stretching across a massive open green space. I could see a white statue at the end, far in the distance. Branching off of the avenue were footpaths that led to garden walks: manicured trees and hedges, fountains, tons of flowers. Io was surprised to see so much color so late in the year. Then again, I’ve also been surprised by the amount of flower shops around the whole city: every few blocks is a tiny shop crammed with flowers, spilling out onto the sidewalk.

Queen Anne’s Garden is surrounded by a wrought iron gate with a gilded crown above the entrance, and it is every bit as beautiful as I could have imagined. First is a circular garden with hundreds (literally, hundreds) of varieties of roses. The air was heavy with the scent of so many flowers still blooming. Beyond this was a perfect lagoon complete with weeping willows, mallards and black swans, a tiny island reachable by troll footbridge, a waterfall, and of course lush flowers and vegetation and strategically placed benches.

I have been reading Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island, and he talks about how the gardens in England are perfected versions of natural places: so beautiful, so planned, that they mimic nature while aspiring to improve upon it. The lagoon in Queen Anne’s Garden is beautiful: it would be a perfect setting for a romantic scene in a Jane Austen movie. But that’s just it: I got an odd sense that the planners and gardeners are aiming for a fictional perfection in this garden. But this somehow didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the place.

I sat for awhile on a bench and watched the ducks feed in the lagoon. There were also some black birds with red beaks swimming around—not sure what kind they were but I know we don’t have them in the states. They were kind of stupid: they kept trying to take flight from the water, but couldn’t get airborne fast enough and their wings would catch in the water and they would go crashing through the surface. It was pretty hilarious. You would think that they would decide that water was just not their thing.