The Unexpected Beauty of Croydon

Over in Shirley, in the east of the borough of Croydon, there are some beautiful privately-owned green spaces which the public are sometimes allowed to visit.  MHA The Wilderness Garden rhododendron "Cynthia", April 2026 MHA The Wilderness Garden is a beautiful ornamental garden tucked away behind a nursing home on Shirley Church Road. The site was originally the garden of the Reverend William Wilks, who was vicar of nearby St John's Church and a renowned horticulturist. He was heavily involved with the Royal Horticultural Society, becoming its secretary and journal editor. His interest in hybridising plants produced the Shirley poppy, while his style of gardening was "wild", with a variety of habitats including a bog garden.  Bog garden, April 2024 The garden was sadly left to decline for many years, but the MHA charity have been restoring it and it is looking beautiful. When I visited in late April, a number of different varieties of rhododendron were in full ...

This is where I confess that I have not always loved living in this town. I first moved here in the late 1990s, with my family. I've made several attempts to move away but ended up moving back. As a teenager, I found central Croydon soulless and ugly. Grey buildings under a grey sky, punctuated by grey, windswept, traffic-choked dual carriageways. The only way to get across the dual carriageways was through dingy, smelly underpasses. The shopping centres were filled with generic chain stores. The only thing I liked was the fast trains taking me to more interesting places, like central London and Brighton. Whitgift Centre c. 2001 Looking back, the real reason I hated living in Croydon was that I didn't have friends here and I lacked the confidence to put myself into situations where I might make new friends. I didn't have much appreciation for nature or for history. I took the bustling town centre for granted. I enjoyed browsing HMV and Virgin Megastores for CDs but had litt...