Mount Street Gardens were laid out in 1889 on the site of a former burial ground. The layout is unchanged from that time and there is a bronze drinking fountain designed, in 1891, by Harold Peto and Sir Ernest George. It is a public garden in the best Victorian tradition - a place for quiet rest, not, like a public park, a place for active recrteation.
Mount Street Gardens is a sheltered place with a favourable microclimate, allowing a number of near-tender plants to flourish, including Phoenix canariensis, Acacia dealbata, and Trachycarpus fortunei.
