Founded approximately 15 years ago by Adolfo Harrison and fellow designer and writer Darryl Moore, Cityscapes is a garden design festival that brings together landscape designers, artists, cultural institutions and communities to explore new approaches to urban parks and public spaces. Through temporary installations and permanent gardens, the initiative aims to challenge conventional approaches to public realm design, promote creative urban greening and demonstrate how collaborative landscape projects can benefit the wider public.
One such project is Greenwood Theatre Pocket Park in London Bridge, created through a collaboration between Cityscapes, Team London Bridge, King’s College London, Network Rail, the Mayor’s Pocket Parks Programme and Southwark Council. Designed by renowned British fashion designer Dame Zandra Rhodes and garden designer and television presenter Joe Swift, the garden transforms the area around Greenwood Theatre into a vibrant urban oasis, combining bold colour, diverse planting and inviting spaces for people to sit and linger.
The project brings together the worlds of fashion and garden design, using colour and planting to establish a distinctive identity within the surrounding streetscape. Zandra Rhodes’s approach centred on introducing colour as a way of bringing energy and warmth to an otherwise overlooked urban space, creating a place that could be enjoyed throughout the year and in all weather conditions.
Joe Swift’s planting design embraces London’s urban microclimate, combining an eclectic selection of plants, including exotic species, to provide year-round interest, colour and scent. The planting introduces horticultural depth while establishing a strong visual character for both the theatre and its surroundings.
Beyond its aesthetic and social function, Greenwood Theatre Pocket Park demonstrates the environmental potential of small-scale urban landscape interventions. The garden provides opportunities for informal social interaction, contributes to urban biodiversity and helps reduce surface water runoff and flooding. By integrating planting and public seating into a previously underused space, the project illustrates how pocket parks can improve the quality of the urban environment while creating accessible places for people to enjoy.
Through Cityscapes’ collaborative approach, the Greenwood Theatre Pocket Park demonstrates how partnerships between designers, artists, cultural organisations, local authorities and communities can transform overlooked urban spaces into distinctive, welcoming and more sustainable public landscapes.
In 2015 The Greenwood Theatre won the People's Choice Award (voted on by SGD members, Homes & Gardens readers, and the general public).
For more info visit the Cityscapes website.
The Architecture Foundation, Barbican, British Library, The EDF London Eye, Fashion & Textile Museum, Greater London Authority, Hackney Council, Kings College London, London Bridge Station, National Theatre, Network Rail, The Old Vic Tunnels, Royal Horticultural Society, Siobhan Davies Dance Studios, Stratford Rising, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, South Bank & Bankside Cultural Quarter, Southwark Council, and Team London Bridge.
