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Jellicoe Gardens

Tom Stuart-Smith Ltd were commissioned by Argent to work with them and the Aga Khan Development Network to design a garden inspired by the early Persian garden traditions, where sunlight, shade and water are balanced to create a place of calm, comfort and quiet reflection.

Jellicoe Gardens opened in November 2021 and can now be enjoyed by all. It is one of a number of public squares and gardens at King’s Cross that form a coherent collection of linked green spaces defined by their diversity and quality. Inspiration has been taken primarily from the great garden Bagh-e Fin, a traditional Persian garden located in Kashan, Iran. It is on a much larger scale, but the plan is quite similar.

We have worked in collaboration on this project, with Townshend Landscape Architects supervising the hard landscape construction and Bell Philips Architects developing the detailed design for the central pavilion. This was initially a point of debate as Persian gardens always have covered pavilions. We argued that it would not be appropriate to have a roof on this building and it should symbolise the pavilion rather than be a literal copy.

While the layout of the garden is undeniably Persian in origin, the naturalistic drifts of planting are developed from the traditional English herbaceous border where the proposed planting has an informal, meadow-like character, drawing the eye across swathes of colour and texture.

The gardens pay tribute to Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe (8 October 1900 – 17 July 1996), a great landscape architect, planner and architect. A Camden resident and a founding member of the Landscape Institute, Sir Geoffrey was involved in the 1960s campaign to save St Pancras Station.