A private garden is a wonderful thing – a beautifully manicured space, that only you and your neighbors have access to. It’s huge – think a city block. It’s well cared for. And someone else mows the lawn.

London is full of them, but Notting Hill’s are special because the homes all back up to the garden (rather than facing the garden, which requires crossing a street to get in). So if you are lucky enough to live on the ground floor, you walk out your back door, through your own truly private patio, and from there, into the garden. For those of us living on the fifth floor, a key gets you in the gate.

We were lucky enough to get access to our street’s private garden, Arundel Garden, about half-way through our tenancy. And once we had the key, we did not miss a single day in that garden.

It’s the perfect place for a pug walk, a picnic, to read a book, to stay cool on a hot day, to meet neighbors, and to have a drink after – what we have been referring to as – “work”.

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In my opinion, the garden is perfect. It’s broken into four large sections: three grassy areas, and a childs’ play area. The design provides all the best features of a garden – large open spaces for picnics and games, connected by winding paths for mystery about what’s around the corner. Around the edges of the garden is a wide gravel path that goes the whole way around if you are in a hurry. Which I never was. I took the winding paths. Here’s one of my favorite paths through a rose-covered trellis.

Not only is the garden beautiful, it provides a community, which was nice for us during our short time in Notting Hill. The garden was pretty quiet during the summer, but the same dogs walked through in the mornings, and neighbors came out on hot nights to cool off (no AC in London) and pick flowers.

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We really saw the potential of the garden in the last weeks of August, when families returned from their holidays (our neighbors spent the summer in Spain and, more randomly, Lake Tahoe). The garden filled with kids, their parents, and pets. There are also events in the garden – early in the summer, Shakespeare in the Garden put on A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I was sad to leave Notting Hill just when the garden started really buzzing with people. The garden was changing as well – seed heads formed, apples appeared, and the leaves started to fall off the huge London Plane Trees. I’m wishing I could watch the garden continue to change through its senescence over the next few months. I’ll just have to imagine it. And add a private garden to my wish list.