Another blooming triumph for Warwick Square in 2025!

Once again, those of us lucky enough to enjoy our superb Warwick Square Garden environment with its imaginative planting can congratulate our fantastic gardening team for sweeping the board recently at the Guildhall Awards Ceremony. This annual event spotlighted the winners of the two premier ‘Gardens, Parks and Squares’ public competitions held throughout London this Summer. (Quite a step up from enthusiastically sweeping the perimeter paths and Garden hut compound through rain and sun all year!)

Sarah Syborn and her team have set themselves such high standards over the past decade, winning numerous awards along the way,  that she was reluctant to enter the competition this year; she felt our Garden had already peaked earlier this Summer. But happily she relented…and our Garden won Gold in both the competitions! That means Gold in ‘London in Bloom’ in the Small Parks category: and Gold in the’ London Garden Squares Competition’! 

But the result’s even more prestigious than those Golds, amazing though they are, faced with very strong competition from dozens of London squares, gardens and parks.

Why? Because ‘London Garden Squares’ normally awards several gold medals in the’ Large Private Squares’ category, based on a wide variety of gardening criteria the judges use to assess each competitor. Every Gold Award winner has to score more than a total of 85% out of a maximum100 marks, which is a big challenge when everyone is being marked robustly for sustainability, maintenance, planting, accessibility, outreach and eco-friendly considerations. And from this small group of competitors which achieve Gold Award status, the judges then select one pre-eminent Category Winner,  awarded overall First Place from all the Gold Award winners …and yes, we won that too!

It’s a thrilling result, and I know you will join me in congratulating Sarah, Tim, Josefina, the Garden Committee and everyone who has supported the Garden in different ways during the year.

Meanwhile, we dedicate this year’s Gold Awards victory to Craig Storey, for many years our dedicated second gardener, before his untimely death in March this year. Appropriately, we agreed with him to plant a south-facing tree which he carefully selected himself, a hoheria sexstylosa that flowers in July/August, to remember his many happy years in the Garden.

Colin Sheaf
Chairman, The Warwick Square Company

All photos are by Sarah Syborn, Head Gardener, Warwick Square Garden

Rosa Bengal Crimson, also known as Bengal Beauty, has turned pink with
the cold. This is a normal process and related to temperature changes.

The rose was introduced from China in 1792 and they are said to flower for
an astonishing 360 days a year. Not being a numbers person I haven’t
counted the days but certainly it flowers a lot!

Originally used as a dye in India an interesting piece of information is that it is used as a water soluble xanthene dye in medicine and biology to stain dead or damaged tissue and cells especially on the surface of the eye and
as a photosensitiser to help diagnose eye infections. Also used on horses for similar reasons.

There are clinical trials currently being carried out to use rose Bengal for the treatment of eczema, psoriasis, melanoma, breast cancer and neuroendocrine tumours.