One of the West End’s biggest green spaces will be closed for more than a year

If you work in Mayfair and enjoy a lunchtime park visit, we have some bad news. The West End’s second biggest green space (after Time Out’s favourite lunch spot, Lincoln’s Inn Fields) has closed for more than a year to undergo a ‘radical makeover’. 

Mayfair’s Grosvenor Square closed its gates on June 8, and won’t reopen until summer 2026. The leafy spot will undergo ‘the largest private investment in public green space in the West End for a generation’, landlords said. 

The 300-year-old park is undergoing a transformation first conceived by Tonkin Liu and brought forward by BDP architects. It will bring new biodiversity to the square with 70,000 new plants, 44 new trees, new wetlands and around 80,000 new bulbs, increasing planting from just 140 square metres to a massive to 8,000 square metres, creating a new central London haven for wildlife and habitats.

This is the square’s fourth redesign in its lifetime and will pay homage to the original 1720s garden, reinstating an oval shaped lawn, framed by a new footpath and a surrounding woodland garden. 

The plans hope to ‘reanimate’ the posh square, which is owned by Grosvenor, a company owned by the Duke of Westminster. This green glow-up is being supported by horticulturalist Professor Nigel Dunnett, known for urban green projects, including the Tower of London Superbloom and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, working along side ecologist Gary Grant.

Here’s a peek at the transformation. 

Oh no: this beloved Hackney venue is at risk of closure. 

South-east London is getting a new rapid bus route.