Monday, 17 February 2025

Green London: St Mary Staining Garden & Plane Tree

The City of London is dense with office blocks, but there are still places where nature is allowed to thrive. In some of those green spaces, the law even forbids building. One example is at 100 Wood Street, which had to be constructed around the garden of St Mary Staining and the giant plane tree that grows there. On this page you can see a photo I took earlier this month.

The garden and a few gravestones on one side are all that remain of the church of St Mary Staining, which was destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666. When architects Norman Foster and Partners designed new offices at the turn of the millennium, they weren't allowed to build over the historic site and even had to bend the outer walls around the tree. 

A friend of mine used to work there and took me to see the garden, which is one of London's hidden gems. Apparently the offices inside are very nice too. 

If you want to find out more about this history of St Mary Staining, here are some links:

I've been blogging regularly about London's parks, gardens, woods and wild places in an effort to dispel a prevalent myth in the pagan community that it's just all concrete. Even in the City, which is of course heavily built up, there are still areas where nature thrives. Interestingly, some are where there used to be churches that are no longer sites of Christian worship. To me this feels symbolic of pagan nature worship subtly regrowing.

Here are links to some of my earlier posts on Green London:

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