Jubilee Gardens

The site of Jubilee Gardens is former backland; it was the site of the Dome of Discovery, the main exhibition feature of the 1951 Festival of Britain. The Jubilee Gardens were created in 1976, designed by Neville Conder and Stuart Taylor, and were opened by Queen Elizabeth II in the year of her Silver Jubilee in 1977. In 1985 a bronze sculpture, 'No Pasaran' by Ian Walter, was unveiled in Jubilee Gardens by the then Labour Leader Michael Foot. It was commissioned by the GLC to stand near County Hall as a memorial to the British members of the International Brigade who had gone to Spain to fight with the Republican forces against Franco's Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War 1936-39. The sculpture is not in its original location due to the subsequent redevelopments in Jubilee Gardens. Ian Walter has created sculptures in other London parks, including Fenner Brockway in Red Lion Square (q.v.) and Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square (q.v.). In 1987, following the demise of the GLC, ownership of the park and the adjacent County Hall passed to the London Residual Body, which sold County Hall to the Shiryama Corporation with covenants over areas of the park.

The gardens were partially closed for 5 years in the 1990s while the Jubilee Line extension was being built and were re-turfed as a temporary measure prior to permanent new landscaping. In 1994 the freehold of Jubilee Gardens and Hungerford Car Park passed to the Arts Council of England and the land was then transferred to the South Bank Centre on a long lease. The erection of the London Eye in 1999 greatly increased the public usage of the site, which at that time was largely grassed with paths across it and some shrub planting, while future landscaping was still under consideration. Jubilee Park Steering Group, bringing together local stakeholders together with the South Bank Centre and CABE, then launched a design competition in order to transform Jubilee Gardens. Although in 1999 Dutch landscape architect Adriaan Geuze had been commissioned to redesign the park (South Bank News, winter 1999), this initial scheme did not go ahead. In June 2005 landscape designers West 8, of which Geuze is a partner, were selected as the winning design team for the new park and contractors Frost Landscape Construction Ltd were appointed to carry out the work.

Jubilee Gardens were officially completed on 31 May 2012 and re-opened in the presence of Kate Hoey, MP for Vauxhall, and in time for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Celebrations. Features of the new gardens include flowerbeds planted with geraniums, granite paths and seating, lighting columns and a new playground that has a ‘timber tangle’, ‘jungle arena’, ‘spider web’ and a flock of wooden sheep. 69 mature trees have been planted, with species including English and pin oak, common beech, red beech, sweet gum, bald cypress and small-leaved lime. 

The Jubilee Gardens Trust, made up of residents’ organisations, local businesses and neighbouring landowners, is the local charity responsible for the management and maintenance of Jubilee Gardens.