This new American Garden has been created with funds raised by The American Garden in Peckham. The Charity’s goal is to re-design, protect and promote this garden, honouring the renowned 18th century botanist, Peter Collinson, and his seed and plant exchange with John Bartram.

This new website is still under construction - as is our garden.

 
 

The Garden has been created on the site of the Park’s original 1907 American Garden, which, over time, lost most of its perennials and shrubs.

The result was an area of grass, weeds and a few trees, subsisting on nutrient-depleted soil. Work to re-imagine the Garden began in 2018 by digging plant beds to increase aeration and adding dressings to lower soil pH. A broad range of trees, shrubs and perennials was then planted, using species originally found on the east coast of North America, plants which need acidic soil. Consequently, by providing a wide range of food sources for pollinators —birds, bats, butterflies, beetles, moths, and most importantly, bees — the garden’s plant community has increased both species abundance and richness and created a new microclimate with natural windbreaks and more agreeable conditions. Plants were chosen to replicate those which would have been found in Collinson’s Peckham garden.

 
 

 

 

Peter Collinson was Born in London in 1694 and sent to live with his maternal grandmother in Peckham at the age of two.

It was there Collinson developed his love of nature. With his grandmother he often went ‘to Visit Gardens round London to Buy Fruit & Flowers & Clip’d Yews in shapes of Birds, Dogs, Men & Ships' which were to grace her garden. As early as 1721, he was writing to George Robins in Maryland about ‘my garden.’