You Can Picnic at Buckingham Palace This Summer
Forget tea with the Queen—you can now enjoy a picnic in the monarch's backyard. For the first time ever, Buckingham Palace is allowing guests to bring and enjoy food in the palace's expansive gardens.
While the palace grounds are typically open throughout the summer, this is the first year guests will be allowed to enjoy the sweeping 39-acre gardens for a self-guided tour with a meal in tow. Guests are invited to wander the ground's wildflower meadow, Rose Garden, 3.5 acre lake, 156-meter Herbaceous Border, and more.
The Royal Collection Trust tells CNN that visitors will be able to access areas of the garden previously only available through guided tours. For those still interested in the traditional guided tour, tickets will still be available from July 9th to September 19 (additional springtime tours are also available on weekends in April and May). Guests can also take special tours of Buckingham Palace, where visitors can see many of the Palace’s magnificent State Rooms, though full palace tours are still unavailable due to Coronavirus restrictions.
Despite Buckingham Palace's urban location in the Westminster area of London, the Queen's garden is a biodiverse habitat for rare flora and fauna. In the springtime, the garden's meadows are carpeted with primroses, bluebells, flowering camellia, magnolia and azalea shrubs and trees. With more than 1,000 trees and over 320 varieties of wildflowers and grasses, the gardens are a welcome respite from the bustle of the city.
The garden at Buckingham Palace, originally designed by gardener Henry Wise over 300 years ago, is the location of the Queen's annual garden summer parties (last year's party was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and boasts trees planted by and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The garden is also home to the National Collection of Mulberry Trees. Thanks to a new book released by the Royal Collection Trust, Buckingham Palace: A Royal Garden, royal and garden enthusiasts alike who aren't able to visit the grounds can get a closer look at the landscaping as well as a recount of the garden's history.
Ready to plan your visit? Tickets for all visits to Buckingham Palace are available on the Royal Collection Trust's website.
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