Natural History Museum Gardens

The Natural History Museum has reimagined its five-acre gardens into an accessible, free-to-visit green space in the heart of London, as part of its Urban Nature Project.

Since the Natural History Museum’s opening in 1881, its 5 acres of gardens have continually evolved. The gardens have undergone significant changes over the years, having been used as lawns, tennis courts, a skating rink, allotments and even a cemetery for de-fleshing whale carcasses! 

In 2022, gardens were closed for another transformation. As part of a wider  Urban Nature Project to support urban nature recovery across the UK, the new gardens will create a welcoming, accessible, and biologically diverse free, green space in the heart of London, opened in July 2024.  

Visitors entering the garden from the Exhibition Road area step into the Evolution Garden, embarking on a journey through 2.7 billion years of our planet's history. This experience features a timeline showcasing plants, geology, and representations of reptiles, birds, and mammals. 

On the Eastern side, the Nature Discovery Garden (previously called the Wildlife Garden) will serve as a living laboratory, where visitors and scientists can identify and monitor wildlife in an urban environment.  A network of sensors will collect environmental data and, together with environmental DNA data, build a picture of life in the gardens. This makes the gardens one of the most intensively studied urban sites of its kind, globally, and a testbed for conservation science innovation.

It is hoped that the methods, techniques and learning from the Urban Nature project will be shared widely and influence many future biodiversity projects in South Kensington.