The Garden Museum and Cafe, on the south bank of the Thames, is built on hallowed ground. Not figuratively, but literally: builders working there last year stumbled on the remains of no fewer than five archbishops of Canterbury, among them Richard Bancroft, who oversaw the publication of the King James Bible.
Perhaps that shouldn’t have been a complete surprise. The museum occupies St Mary-at-Lambeth, a medieval church next to Lambeth Palace, the official residence of Bancroft and his ilk since the 13th century.
For gardeners, however, the interred archbishops play second fiddle to two other permanent residents of the churchyard.
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The first, John Tradescant the elder, was a 17th-century gardener and naturalist who travelled to Arctic Russia and north Africa, battling pirates as he gathered seeds and cuttings for his botanical collection. The second is his son, John Tradescant the younger, who didn’t fall far from the tree. As head gardener to Charles I, he imported plants and trees from the American colonies and laid out the gardens of the Queen’s House in Greenwich.
Three centuries later, the green-fingered father and son became the saviours of St Mary’s. The old church was deconsecrated in 1972, a victim of industrial decline and depopulation, and a few years later had been scheduled for demolition when Rosemary Nicholson discovered the Tradescant’s graves and campaigned to turn it into a museum of gardening history.
This resolutely urban spot, between Lambeth Road and the embankment, must have seemed like an odd location for a horticultural exhibit. Now, after a generation of gentrification, it’s the perfect place for a city garden - and a restaurant with a view.
On a chilly afternoon of mist and milky sunshine, the thick glass walls of the dining room are a Turneresque patchwork of light and shade. In front is the Thames, on one side a courtyard garden containing the Tradescant tomb, and on the other a larger wedge of lawn and ornamental hedge. Beyond an avenue of bare-branched trees is open sky, interrupted only by the white towers of Battersea Power Station.
The menu, like the building, embraces its location. Many ingredients are locally sourced - salad leaves from Keats Community Urban Farm in Bexhill, bread from The Snapery in Bermondsey - but there’s nothing parochial about the way they’re put together. Head chefs Harry Kaufman (formerly of Lyle’s and St John Bread & Wine) and George Ryle (of Padella and Primeur) have drawn inspiration from Italy and Scandinavia for their ever-changing collection of dishes.
The salad of pear, radicchio, Beenleigh Blue cheese and walnuts is Instagram-pretty, a garden on a plate. But it’s pleasing to eat as well as look at, the richness of the cheese flattered by the soft sweetness of the fruit, the sharpness of the leaves and the crunch of the candied nuts. Burrata with cime di rapa - creamy mozzarella with bitter turnip leaves, gently stewed in olive oil - is pared-back and pure.
The main course of sea trout is equally uncluttered - and equally well served by a natural sauvignon blanc, which is altogether earthier than its commercial cousin (much of the wine list is organic or natural). The fish, thick and opalescent, comes with pink fir potatoes and monk’s beard, which looks like samphire but has the flavour of spinach. A light butter sauce provides a hint of richness and a piquancy - but only a hint.
This is food in a minor key, wintry and consoling like a Scandi noir box set. It truly is a seasonal restaurant: in spring and summer, as the trees come into bud and the new year’s harvest bursts onto the menu, it will all be very different.
The Garden Cafe, London SE1, is open daily for lunch and for dinner on Tuesdays and Fridays
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Holden Frith is The Week’s digital director. He also makes regular appearances on “The Week Unwrapped”, speaking about subjects as diverse as vaccine development and bionic bomb-sniffing locusts. He joined The Week in 2013, spending five years editing the magazine’s website. Before that, he was deputy digital editor at The Sunday Times. He has also been TheTimes.co.uk’s technology editor and the launch editor of Wired magazine’s UK website. Holden has worked in journalism for nearly two decades, having started his professional career while completing an English literature degree at Cambridge University. He followed that with a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago. A keen photographer, he also writes travel features whenever he gets the chance.
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