The City of London's hanging garden

For its first exhibition, the new City Centre gallery in Basinghall Street is celebrating the rich diversity of the 200 (yes, that’s right) open spaces in the City of London. Artist Rebecca Louise Law has entwined fresh flowers with copper wire and suspended them from the gallery’s ceiling, where they are gradually drying.   

The installation, “The City Garden”, uses blooms that can be found in 34 surrounding gardens, from achilleas to roses.There are also two short films of City gardens and a free map with a walking tour that will take you round green spaces ranging from church gardens such as Christchurch Greyfriars and St Dunstan in the East to contemporary havens like Professor Nigel Dunnett’s Beech Gardens in the Barbican. And if you save the map, also listed are the gardens planned for London Wall Place, not due to open until 2017.

The exhibition is open Monday - Saturday, 1000 - 1700 and runs until September 25, 2016. Entrance is free.

Visit on a Friday or Saturday and you can also see the City Centre’s model of the Square Mile.

The City Centre, 80 Basinghall St, London EC2V 5AR

www.thecitycentre.london

Tulip fever

Back from a very short visit to Amsterdam to see the tulips. When I went a few years ago, they were late because of a long winter - this time there was colour everywhere. Some 12,000 bulbs have been planted around the canal ring and in private gardens, which were open for the last weekend in April. These blooms were in the Begijnhof, a cluster of buildings around a 14th century courtyard, which once provided homes for women who belonged to a lay Catholic sisterhood.

To the west of Amsterdam are the bulbfields, a glorious patchwork of colour, with daffodils, hyacinths and tulips of every variety imaginable.

The big attraction there is Keukenhof, where, for eight weeks every spring, landscaped gardens are ablaze with huge drifts of colour. Some 800,000 visitors flock to see the 4.5 million bulbs, all planted by hand.

Tulipmania began back in the 17th century, when Dutch traders brought tulips back to Amsterdam from Turkey. They became a luxury item, with unusual bulbs selling for up to 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman. When prices fell, some investors were reportedly ruined.

Today, there are more than 100 varieties, which come in colours and shapes that the early collectors would envy, such as Sorbet (left) and Greenstar (below)

The displays provide plenty of inspiration. Here the intense blue of Muscari Armeniacum is a perfect foil for the white of the Calgary tulip.

New at Keukenhof is a walled garden which gives the historic background to the tulip and other bulbs in the Netherlands.
Here, the Knot Garden recreates a style popular in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Keukenhof is open daily until May 16. Tour companies run full and half-day tours, or take a train from Amsterdam to Schiphol airport, and then a bus for Lisse.

And if you can't get there in time for the tulips, consider a visit during the Open Garden Days, (Friday 18 - Sunday 20 June) when some 25 - 30 private gardens hidden along the canals open to the public.

More details at http://www.amsterdamtourist.nl/