Buckingham Palace Garden

You are standing by the largest private garden in all of London. Spanning thirty-nine acres, this green expanse functions as a massive, living sanctuary in the center of the city. While it serves as the backdrop for the famous royal garden parties, the site has a much older and more peculiar history. It occupies the former grounds of a failed seventeenth-century project, when King James the First planted thousands of mulberry trees here in an unsuccessful attempt to launch a British silk industry. One of those original mulberry trees still stands today, and the garden now houses the official national collection of over forty varieties of mulberry.