I think the answer is ‘yes’ – and it should certainly be included in London garden tours. For a start, it is the oldest of London’s Royal Parks. Greenwich has associations with the period in British history most loved by the BBC and English schools. Only the 1930s and ’40s rival the Tudors.
Greenwich was enclosed by Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, who also built what became the Royal Palace of Placentia. Henry VIII was born here. So was his daughter, Elizabeth I. The design and the design history are also of great interest. Greenwich Park began as a late-medieval Hunting Park with an Early Renaissance garden. It was then influenced by the Baroque Style in the seventeenth century by the Serpentine style in the eighteenth century and by the Gardenesque Style in the nineteenth century. The green laser beam is a Post-Abstract twenty-first century addition – and a great idea. The designers who influenced the park include Inigo Jones, André Le Nôtre, John Evelyn Christopher Wren, Lancelot Brown and John Claudius Loudon.
I am not sure that Greenwich would get my vote as the most interesting Royal Park. Although, its riverside location would have to make it one of my favorites.
My vote would go to a secret garden or walled garden – perhaps part of a larger royal garden. [ http://landscapenotes.com/2013/03/22/st-johns-lodge-the-secret-garden/ ] This post is on the secret garden at St John’s Lodge. Although I am not personally familiar with this garden – nor the one at Kilver Court – it is the type of garden I am thinking of? [ http://www.kilvercourt.com/secret-gardens ] Charlton Manor used to have an abandoned secret garden with old roses…I am sure that its use by the Primary School has quite the same romantic associations.