Designed by Edmund Wimperis, the Estate Surveyor, as the centre piece to the proposed new houses in South Street and Waverton Street, the new communal garden was still in the design stages at the outbreak of the First World War. The garden centres on a sunken elliptical lily pond with brick and tile walls typically Arts and Crafts in detail, a perimeter path of brick laid in a herring bone pattern completing the Edwardian feel.
A large plane tree predating the garden was saved through the provision of a brick and tile retaining wall on the South Audley Street side of the site.
The original owner of 38 South Street ‘the last private house of great size to be built in London’ was second Baron Aberconway who, during his tenure became president of the Royal Horticultural Society. His own garden of Bodnant had been completed in 1914 and it is most likely that he considerably influenced the original planting at South Street.
A charming detail of the garden is the gardeners’ potting shed, the tile work of the frieze and roofline carefully integrating with that of the garden wall.