Welcome to month five of Primrose Hill. This month we‘re going to take a moment to enjoy some early spring sunshine in one of London’s charming garden squares. Come in, take a seat and admire the spring bulbs and the first Clematis flowers.
London is as famous for its garden squares as it is for its elegant terraces - their creation went hand in hand - and they add a calming swathe of greenery to busy city streets, enclosed by simple, black-painted railings. The oldest is Lincoln's Inn Fields, which was laid out in the 1630s to earlier designs by Inigo Jones (better known for designing nearby Covent Garden). The garden squares are more domestic in scale than London's Royal Parks and many are still private, with each house around the square contributing to its upkeep and having a key to the gate.
If you've watched Notting Hill you'll remember Hugh Grant struggling to scale the locked gates of Rosmead Gardens, while a bemused Julia Roberts looked on.
Hugh Grant tackling those tricky park railings in Notting Hill (1999)
Now, if you're looking at all the pieced railings in my block and your eyes are filling with tears, I have some consolation for you, because once you’re inside the square you don’t see the railings, as Hugh and Julia discovered. All you see are the hedges. So you could substitute rectangles of a green print to replace the railings portion of the block.
You will need 2 5½” x 6½” green printed pieces (omitting steps 2 - 4 in the directions) to replace the two sections of railings.
Whether you choose to sit inside or outside of the railings, you can find my block patterns in issue 85 of Today's Quilter ...no climbing required!
Nicola xx