London’s Pocket Parks: St George’s Garden, SE1

This is a very new and very small pocket park squeezed into an empty triangle of a space left when a block of flats was built here in the late 1990s.

The corner plot next to St George’s Circus roundabout was once home to several different buildings, including the Royal Eye Hospital, a couple of pubs, and the very large Surrey Theatre.

The theatre closed in 1934, and the site was cleared for redevelopment, but WWII got in the way, and even then, the area was badly damaged by bombing. Post-war buildings were themselves cleared in the middle of the 1990s for the current occupant, a large block of student housing.

That development left a rather awkward-looking triangle of fenced-off land facing right onto the main road — the sort of blank, empty space that would never be permitted today. It is officially the fire escape for the student flats, but the fire escape route only uses part of the empty plot.

A small addition arrived about 12 years ago when the foundation stone from the Royal Eye Hospital was restored to its original location. Although not quite in the right place, as the hospital was around the corner, it was still close enough to be a nice addition.

Still the triangle remained empty. The large fire escape warning sign painted onto the pavement in front of the space vanished when the pavement was relaid in 2015. Then, in early 2021, the pocket park took over most of the empty plot, leaving a route for the fire escape.

The old metal fence has been replaced with a brightly coloured wall, and three rows of raised planters have been added around the edges of the triangle, leaving the foundation stone as the centre point of the pocket park.

The garden’s structural work, including the entrance arch, was designed by architect Anna Renninson and constructed by Darren Ray and Jose Crillo Aguilar. The names of the people responsible for the garden are written on the notices behind the plants.

An irrigation system waters the plants with water supplied by South Bank University, which owns the student accommodation block.

The local business development group, We Are Waterloo looks after the ongoing maintenance of the garden.

Even on a cold winter morning, the predominantly evergreen planting means that while not at its best, the pocket park is still a pleasant place to stop for a while. Maybe on a less cold day, you can borrow a book from the mini-library by the entrance.

And even if you don’t stop, it’s a heck of a lot nicer to walk past than the fenced-off void of blandness that existed there before.