The 2012 Open Squares Weekend takes place in London on 9-10 June, 2012 when around 200 private squares and other hidden gardens across the capital's 25 boroughs will be open to the public. 

This is the 14th year of the event, designed to highlight the important contribution private community gardens and squares make to London’s environment. This June the gardens include one on top of a supermarket, the gardens at Wormwood Scrubs prison and apartment 1A at Kensington Palace.

Among the new gardens for 2012’s Open Squares weekend will be the roof garden on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank of the River Thames, the gardens laid out in 1850 at St Paul’s Churchyard in Covent Garden and Arlington Square in Islington, an early Victorian Square recently revitalised by residents who have dug in thousands of litres of compost and manure, planted 7,000 spring bulbs and 80 rose bushes and created a community vegetable plot.

The garden at the Jamyang Buddhist Centre in Kennington, in what was once the exercise yard for prisoners of the Old Kennington Courthouse, will be open on 12 June. Ticket-holders can also visit the garden used for horticultural therapy at Royal Hospital Chelsea.

The London Squares Act of 1931 protected 461 London squares and other green enclosures from being built over. Most of the city’s squares are surrounded on four sides by a square or rectangle of roads lined with buildings. However the areas are rarely square. Circles, ovals, octagons, crescents and semi-circles are common. Grosvenor Square is oval, Bedford Square is circular and Charterhouse Square is pentagonal. During World War Two, the railings of many squares were taken to be melted down and used for armaments.

Tickets that allow entry to all venues over the weekend costs £9 if bought in advance and £12 during the weekend. Tickets will also be sold at the Britain and London Visitor Centre on Lower Regent Street, SW1Y 4XT and from all Capital Garden Centres. There will be guided cycling and walking tours as well as free downloadable podcasts and self-guided bike rides.

Open Garden Squares Weekend, across London, June 9-10, 2012.

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Twitter: @OpenSquares
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