Petersham Nurseries’ afternoon tea is helping to save India’s elephants.

Not another afternoon tea. Yes, another one.

The Petersham in Covent Garden is an Italian-inspired restaurant from plant-haven Petersham Nurseries. The storefront is rather unassuming – quaintly reminiscent of a quintessential French boulangerie. But inside, as you walk through to the main restaurant: plants galore.

You’ll pass a towering life-size elephants made from lantana camara (a species of flowering plant native to the American tropics, duh) as you take your seat under the airy outdoor canopy. And it’s more than just decorative. Petersham Nurseries has partnered with the Elephant Family, which aims to identify mutually beneficial modes of living between Asia’s wildlife and its indigenous communities.

Elephant Family work with on-the-ground conservationists, forest officials and governments to enlarge and reconnect protected areas as well as to improve the living conditions for species outside of these spaces. Their campaign Coexistence is London’s biggest environmental art campaign of 2021 and has raised more than £3m for human-wildlife coexistence projects.

The aptly named ‘Elephant Family Tea’ draws on Indian flavours, and comes arranged on a pretty florentine cake stand. On the savoury menu is spring pea and potato samosas, coronation chicken flatbreads, a mushroom idli, crisp pani puri dough balls filled with crab, and a kedgeree scotch quail egg. 

Plain and fruit scones follow, served with clotted cream and jam. There’s also a selection of cakes and pastries: rum babas, earl grey tea cake, banana and turmeric macarons, mango layered slices and coconut eclairs.

The afternoon tea is priced at £55 per person, with £10 of that being donated to Elephant Family. 

The Petersham, Floral Court, WC2E 9FB.

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Throw some tiny sandwiches in the mix.