Green Rooms of the City: A Chauffeured Day Among London's Garden Squares

There is a particular kind of London day that asks very little of the visitor and gives a great deal back. It involves no queue, no timed ticket, no gallery crowds and no particular ambition beyond a few short walks taken at a civilised pace. Its architecture is green: railings, plane trees, gravel paths, the occasional laurel hedge clipped to a nicety, and behind it all the pale stucco of terraces that have been watching the same square for two hundred years.

The garden square is one of the capital's most underrated civic achievements. It is also, quietly, one of the hardest things to visit well. Access is inconsistent, opening hours are seasonal, and the moments when a square is at its best — early morning, the late afternoon lull — are precisely the moments when parking is most awkward and public transport least pleasant. This is where a chauffeured car earns its place, not as a way of seeing the squares but as a way of waiting between them.

Why the car, rather than the Tube

A garden square circuit is not a sightseeing itinerary in the conventional sense. It is a sequence of pauses, and pauses are what public transport handles badly. The Underground will deliver you to a station; it will not hold your coat, your shopping or your umbrella while you take a twenty-minute walk, and it will certainly not be there at the farther gate when you have finished.

A chauffeured vehicle inverts the arrangement. The car becomes the still point of the day: a place to leave a bag, dry off, take a call, drink some water and decide whether the next square is worth the walk. Between Mayfair and Bloomsbury the distances are short but the traffic is not always cooperative, and a driver who knows the sequence can shift the order of the day by twenty minutes to avoid a closure on Park Lane or a build-up around Victoria.

For guests visiting from outside London, it is also worth noting that the central squares sit inside the Congestion Charge zone, and the newer emissions standards apply to private hire vehicles as much as to any other. A reputable operator handles this as a matter of course; it should not appear on your itinerary as a surprise.

Act One: Mayfair, before the streets fill

The natural start is Mayfair, partly because it is where the day is easiest to begin and partly because its squares reward an early arrival. Berkeley Square, with its plane trees and its nightingales of doubtful historicity, is publicly accessible and best enjoyed before ten, when the benches are still mostly occupied by people reading newspapers rather than by laptop screens. Grosvenor Square, larger and more formal, has the advantage of wide paths and clear sightlines; it is a good place to walk briskly for fifteen minutes before the embassy traffic begins in earnest.

Mount Street Gardens, tucked behind Farm Street, is the connoisseur's choice. It is small, sheltered, planted with mature trees and subtropical oddities, and it holds its warmth on a cool morning better than any of its neighbours. It is public, it is quiet, and it is a sensible place to leave the car for a few minutes while you take a coffee at one of the neighbouring cafés.

A word on the less accessible squares. Several of Mayfair's gardens are private or communal, maintained for the residents of the surrounding properties and opened only on rare occasions. This is not a hardship. Many are best admired from the kerb anyway: the view through the railings, framed by the terrace opposite, is often the more elegant composition. A driver can pause where the road permits and allow a minute or two of looking, which is a more honest pleasure than pretending a key has been offered.

Act Two: Belgravia, viewed at a measured distance

Belgravia is the most formal of the three districts and, for the casual visitor, the most opaque. Belgrave Square, Eaton Square and Chester Square are private gardens, and their gates do not open on request. What they offer instead is one of the finest sequences of nineteenth-century town planning in Europe, best read from the pavement rather than from inside the railings.

The correct approach is a slow loop. From Hyde Park Corner, the car can take you along Grosvenor Place and then turn into the grid of streets behind the squares — Belgrave Place, Chester Row, Eaton Terrace — where the architecture is legible and the traffic modest. There are good stopping points on Elizabeth Street for coffee and provisions, and the walk from there up to the top of Eaton Square gives a clear view of the white stucco frontages that define the district.

Timing matters more here than anywhere else on the route. Between roughly half past twelve and two, the area fills with the lunch trade, and the pavements around the squares become congested. An earlier arrival, say ten to eleven, is considerably more restful, and it allows the driver to reposition the car for the next leg before the school run begins.

Act Three: Bloomsbury, where the squares are open

Bloomsbury is the reward at the end of the day. Its squares are, broadly speaking, more welcoming: Russell Square is a public park with a café and generous paths, Tavistock Square offers a quiet seat under the trees, and Gordon Square, laid out for the walking rather than the viewing, is a pleasant place to finish. Bedford Square, the most architecturally complete of them all, is private, but its railings permit a very good view of the uniform terraces, and the streets around it are among the most civilised in central London for a slow loop by car.

By the time you reach Bloomsbury, the object of the day has changed. The first two acts are about looking; the third is about sitting. A short walk, a bench, a newspaper, and the knowledge that the car is a minute away and will not require you to navigate a bus replacement service at the end of it.

The practical points worth knowing

Access to individual squares changes with ownership, season and maintenance, and it is unwise to plan a day around a gate that may be locked. A reputable chauffeur will not promise entry where none exists; the pleasure of the circuit is the sequence, not the keys.

Two further notes. First, garden squares are at their finest in late spring, when the planes come into leaf and the herbaceous borders are still fresh; early autumn runs it close. Second, Open Garden Squares Weekend, usually held in June, is the one occasion when several private gardens open to the public, and it is worth building a day around if the diary permits — though it also brings crowds, and the early hours are much the better part of it.

Above all, the circuit is a reminder that central London contains more quiet than visitors expect. It simply requires a car that is content to wait, a driver who knows when to move, and a walker willing to stop before the walking becomes a task.