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Gardeners' Question Time

Postbag Edition: Finsbury Circus Gardens

Gardeners' Question Time

BBC

Leisure, Home & Garden

4.61K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Horticultural programme featuring a group of gardening experts.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

0:05.5

Hello and welcome to Garner's question time with me, Peter Gibbs.

0:09.9

Today I'm in a green patch of London, a millennium in the making.

0:14.1

A short walk from Liverpool Street Station in the heart of the city of London,

0:19.0

Finchby Circus Gardens is London's oldest public park.

0:23.3

From Roman burial ground to medieval dumping spot in the early 17th century, the two-acre area

0:30.0

was eventually designed around gravel paths and trees and became very popular with Londoners.

0:35.6

That was until 2010, when the gardens were transformed

0:39.3

from a tranquil green space into a giant building site,

0:43.1

serving as an access shaft for works on crossrail,

0:46.6

the gardens sitting almost directly

0:48.4

above Liverpool Street's Elizabeth Line Station.

0:51.6

Well, following the completion of the works,

0:53.3

the area has been redesigned and recently reopened.

0:56.4

And the person responsible for the site is City Gardens Manager for City of London.

1:01.1

Jake Tibbitts. Hello, Jake.

1:02.7

Hello, welcome.

1:03.7

Give us a sense of what this space was like before Crossrail decided to come in and dig it all up.

1:08.1

So before Crossrail opened, the site had very much bedding, so it was a much more

1:13.5

of a Victorian-type field park.

1:15.8

We had a bandstand, which sat just over here, and a bowling green.

1:20.5

But the site was dominated by lawn and bedding with the substantial trees around the outside

...

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