Seven of the Best Places to Buy Plants in London

Britain is a nation of gardeners, so it’s only fitting that its capital has green fingers too. Whether in a garden, balcony, window box, allotment or sunny patch in the living room, you’ll rarely meet a Londoner who isn’t trying to keep at least a frond or two alive. Accordingly, the city is dotted with plant shops and garden centres: everything from huge nurseries off the M25 through to Zone 1 houseplant boutiques. There are far too many to list, but a select few stand out for their curation, their prices, their helpful staff or a stellar cafe. This is the Broadsheet edit of the best places across London to find your next horticultural fix.

Of all the plant shops in London, Conservatory Archives might triumph for sheer aesthetics. Opened in 2015, its original Hackney Road shop was a compact rainforest of potted plants, filling a beautiful old ironmongery from floor to ceiling. That branch is sadly gone, but Conservatory Archives maintains an east London presence: a double-fronted former furniture showroom on Lower Clapton Road, teeming Jumanji-like with palms, figs and cheese plants. For even more choice, head to the Archives’s most recent opening: a full-blown garden centre, hidden away near Camden Road. This ex-stables with sunshine pouring in through the skylights is a pleasure just to wander, and the yard stocks a typically tasteful edit of outdoor plants.

London’s garden centre gamut runs from functional to polished, with prices to match. Alexandra Palace is a happy medium: more affordable than the boutiques, but far easier to get to for most than the cheap nurseries on the city fringes. Ally Pally stocks a huge range of indoor and outdoor plants (plus all the garden paraphernalia), with plenty of space thanks to its substantial site on the slopes leading up to the palace itself. The staff are supremely helpful and it’s easily reached without a car – though you might need to Uber home if you’re tempted to put too many pots in your trolley. The sunny Glasshouse Cafe rounds off a full horticultural day out. South Londoners should check out its Wandsworth sister Neal’s Nurseries instead.

A genteel Thamesside stroll from Richmond tube station, Petersham Nurseries was opened in 2004 by Francesco and Gael Boglione, owners of the 17th century Petersham House next door. Transforming glasshouses that had belonged to a rundown nursery, the Bogliones brought in the late Skye Gyngell to open a fabulous garden restaurant: dirt floors, plants everywhere, woodburning stoves in winter and Italian-accented farm-to-table cooking that has earned a Michelin Green Star under head chef Ambra Papa. So famous has the restaurant become that it’s easy to forget you can also buy plants here: outdoor perennials and climbers, indoor tropicals and terraria and an abundance of pots and vintage garden decor. If you’re mostly here to shop, stop at the Teahouse instead of the restaurant: it serves a more down-to-earth, organic menu in simpler but equally lovely digs.

Hackney was a very different place in 1997, when the late Beryl Henderson founded her De Beauvoir garden centre in a dilapidated button factory. Her target market was a growing crop of inner-city gardeners, a demographic that has only blossomed since. Three decades on, N1 continues to pull crowds with its tables of houseplants and herbs, as well as fruit trees, shrubs and climbers fit for inner-London terraces and balconies. Cross the road to the Scolt Head pub and you’ll often see tables laden with alocasias, monsteras and pileas, stopping off on their way home to a sunny windowsill.

The venerable Clifton Nurseries dates back to 1851, making it older than most countries, let alone every other garden centre in London. Tucked between townhouses near Maida Vale, Clifton exudes west London class, with elegant signposts directing shoppers through orderly rows of hydrangeas, agapanthus, lavender and jasmine or wisteria plants ready to climb. As well as tropical pots and trailing baskets, the glasshouse hosts a laidback cafe that’s a draw in its own right. Pop in for brunch and a browse on your next trip to Little Venice.

Though it’s since grown offshoots across the capital, The Nunhead Gardener is rooted, as you’d guess, in SE15. Founders Peter Milne and Alejandro Beltran were looking for an escape from their corporate careers, and found it in a disused site opposite Nunhead station. The yard now bursts with fronds and foliage, while the arch under the railway line is lined with potted ferns, palms and succulents. Non-horticultural homeware and gifts are a strong sideline here, with candles, ceramics and stationery vying with the vegetation for shelf space.

It’s a long way from central London to Enfield, where Clockhouse Nursery can be found off a quiet country lane. Run by the Mills family since 1928, it’s a serious gardener’s nursery: no frills, just acres of keenly priced plant life filling enormous greenhouse after enormous greenhouse. If you can grow it in London, you can probably find it here: shrubs, trees, borders, perennials, grasses and flowers of all kinds, mostly grown on site, plus a selection of seeds, bulbs and indoor plants. Make a day of it with a cuppa and a wander around the gardens at Forty Hall over the road.