Behind the secret-garden door at 10, Downing Street

But don't expect to meet Larry the cat, or like him, for that matter.

Winston Churchill in Downing Street Gardens
Sir Winston Churchill enjoying the gardens.
(Image credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Annunciata Elwes's avatar
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Once the sole preserve of Larry the cat and whomever he happens to be chaperoning — our Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office currently cohabits with his sixth Prime Minister — the gardens at 10, Downing Street, will open via the London Open Gardens weekend.

Larry will likely make himself scarce as visitors, who can gain access via a free public ballot to two tours on Saturday, June 7, admire the sweeping lawn, rose beds and Dame Barbara Hepworth sculpture in the garden that has been a haven to world leaders since 1736. 

Larry the cat yawning outside Downing Street

Like most politicians, he is unfazed by criticism.

(Image credit: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

'Without putting too fine a point on it, Larry the cat is a little sh*t. The most miserable animal you’ll ever meet in your life'

Ian Murray, Scottish Secretary of State

Among 111 green spaces across the capital, others new in 2025 include Battersea Rooftop Gardens, one of the largest of its kind in London, whereas returning for the first time since 2017 is the 18th-century gardens of Marlborough House, designed by Sir Christopher Wren and now the Commonwealth Secretariat HQ, where there is a revolving summerhouse commissioned by Queen Mary and a pet cemetery that contains the graves of Queen Alexandra’s dogs Muff, Tiny and Joss, as well as a bunny called Benny.

25 Cannon Street overlooking St Paul's Cathedral

(Image credit:  Judi Saunders/Alamy)

Also, 20 ballot winners will be invited to glimpse ‘behind the scenes’ at London Zoo, Regent’s Park, where the horticulture team will explain, for example, how to plant a jungle to suit a Sumatran tiger. Other returning favourites include 25 Cannon Street, overlooking St Paul’s (above), and the seven-acre Charterhouse Gardens, within Tudor walls.

Now in its 26th year, London Open Gardens is run by (and in support of) the charity London Parks and Gardens Trust (LPG). ‘Our mission is to protect London’s green spaces old and new; to ensure they can be enjoyed by future generations and to make them more accessible,’ explains director Tim Webb, who points out that only 18% of green spaces in the capital are accessible to the public.

Annunciata Elwes
Annunciata Elwes

Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.

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