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We've included every museum in London. Use the filters to find something for you.
Britain's only museum of gardens, in a church beside Lambeth Palace saved for the plant hunters buried in its yard, with a tower to climb.
Also in Outdoors & Nature.
The Tradescants, father and son, were the royal gardeners of the early seventeenth century who went to Russia, the Levant and Virginia for plants and came back with things every English garden now takes for granted, and their tomb stands in the churchyard of St Mary-at-Lambeth, next to Captain Bligh's. When the church was deconsecrated in 1972 and marked for demolition, John and Rosemary Nicholson traced the tomb, and in 1977 they opened the first museum of garden history in the world around it. A rebuilding finished in 2017 put a copper-clad gallery into the nave for the collection, the tools, paintings, plans and curiosities of four hundred years of gardening, and glazed a courtyard garden planted by Dan Pearson at the back. The tower has 131 steps and a view straight down onto Lambeth Palace and across the river to Parliament. The archive holds the working papers of the great postwar designers, the exhibitions run to three a year, and the café is better than a museum café needs to be.
Step-free access
| Monday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
| Wednesday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
| Thursday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
| Friday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
| Saturday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
| Sunday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.