Sculptures In Regent's Park

Avenue Gardens and The English Gardens
The Avenue Gardens, also known as the 'Italian Gardens', were designed in the mid 19th century by the Victorian garden designer Andrew Nesfield, who also designed the Palm House in Kew. His son, Markham Nesfield, landscaped the adjacent English Gardens. Both were restored in the 1990s with the addition of fountains. The simple layout of the garden consists of four avenues of trees, long gravel paths and colourful flower beds among stonework and evergreen hedging. The huge Lion Tazza urn overflows with flowers in the centre of the garden. This is the original Nesfield bowl, supported by four winged lions.





Queen Mary's Garden (Inner Circle)
In the silver Jubilee year of 1935 the Inner Circle Gardens were renamed Queen Mary's Garden by George V, as she often visited them. Her gardens include the spectacular Rose Garden, formed in 1930 following a donation of bushes from the British Rose Growers Association. This garden includes more than 400 types of rose, the scent of which reachese the furthest boundaries of the park. The gardens' recently restored black and gold Jubilee Gates show the date 6 May 1935, under the King's initials. These gates, along with the Chester Road gates, were a gift from the painter Sigismund Goetze to commemorate the Jubilee.



The Secret Garden
This small, secluded garden is one of the park's hidden highlights. It was designed in 1891 for the third Marquis of Bute, who wanted a garden 'fit for meditation'. The entrance is through unmarked green iron gates, off the Inner Circle, near Chester Road. The garden has statues of Hylas and the Nymph set in a stone pool, the topless Goatherd's daughter and the Awakening, two faces within a split seed. There are elegant high-backed wooden benches, numerous nooks of clipped yew and lavender and a sunken lawn rolled out like an exotic rug from the gently curved stone steps facing St John's Lodge, the first villa to be built in the park.