Beth Handley
Hyde Park’s first head gardener on the importance of public green spaces and the challenges of managing them sustainably in line with a rapidly changing climate
I became a gardener in 2017, leaving my job as a solicitor to study for a horticultural qualification while working part-time for a private garden maintenance company. My first full-time role was assistant gardener with the City of London in 2019. Working through the lockdowns and seeing how treasured London’s green spaces were, I knew I wanted to keep working in public parks. So it was a dream to become Hyde Park’s head gardener in June – one of eight parks managed by the Royal Parks charity.
My day begins as I walk through the park gates. I take a dierent route each day to absorb dierent areas. This summer we’ve focused on bedding displays: how they’ve changed through the season and coped with drought. Next year we’ll improve them by growing the more resilient and pollinator-friendly plants. We’re using more perennials in our designs to align with the Royal Parks’ sustainability policies, and we grow them on site. This means planning the displays with our in-house nursery two years in advance.
My greatest joy is helping with the conservation and development of such a famous and well-loved park. It’s exciting to work towards a more sustainable future in a park that’s so steeped in history. There are many areas to cherish, such as the Rose Garden and the Dell, which was originally intended to be a subtropical garden.
People think of Hyde Park as manicured, with its lawns, ornamental borders and bedding displays, but lots of work goes into maintaining natural habitats for wildlife, including deep shrub borders and standing dead wood monoliths. The latter is an important habitat for fungi and invertebrates such as stag beetles and cardinal beetles.
The challenge today is adapting to a rapidly changing climate with plant selection and growing techniques. If you visit, look out for naturalised bulbs on the lawns near the garden entrances, which we hope will extend the season of nectar for pollinators. Our ornamental borders will also reflect the changing climate, with plants that bloom through dry summers, providing food and shelter for wildlife. royalparks.org.uk