Buckingham Palace gardens to reopen this summer, with visitors able to picnic on the lawn for the first time

The Buckingham Palace gardens will reopen this summer and visitors will be able to picnic on the sweeping lawn for the first time.

The 39-acre gardens, closed last year due to the pandemic, will open from July to September, allowing visitors to freely roam the grounds of Her Majesty’s official London residence.

They will have the unique opportunity to guide themselves along a route taking in the 156-metre herbaceous border, plane trees planted by and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and views of the island and its beehives across the 3.5-acre lake.

The visits will be in contrast to the traditional summer tours, which have always been led by a guide.

Features in the south-west garden, including the Rose Garden, summer house and wildflower meadow, will be accessible via a daily guided tour that can be booked separately.

The only other time anyone has been able to picnic on the Queen’s carefully manicured lawn was during a Diamond Jubilee event in 2012.

To mark the occasion, chef Heston Blumenthal conjured up a five-course menu for 12,000 guests who had secured free tickets to a concert at the palace, which was all carefully wrapped and presented in a wicker hamper.

The new system was introduced to allow as many visitors as possible into the gardens whilst adhering to restrictions such as social distancing.

The Royal Collection Trust last year had to borrow £22million from Coutts after the pandemic devastated its income from tourism.

The charity, which looks after the Queen's art collection and official residences, is expected to lose more than £60million in 2020-21, after palaces closed to tourists last year.

In February, it asked its board of trustees, chaired by the Prince of Wales, to approve a new loan for an undisclosed sum for the coming year.

The charity is dependent on visitors for 80 per cent of its income, around two-thirds of which comes from international tourism.

Its traditional garden guided tours at Buckingham Palace will also restart this spring, with tickets available for weekends throughout April and May, allowing enthusiasts to enjoy the tranquility of the garden and learn about its history whilst admiring the meadows carpeted with primroses and bluebells, and the flowering camellias, magnolias and azaleas.

From May to September, the guided tours of Buckingham Palace will also begin again, allowing access to the State Rooms, furnished with treasures from the Royal Collection including paintings by Benjamin West and Franz Xaver Winterhalter. From July, access to the garden will be included in the visit.

For those unable to get there in person, a programme of live online events is available.

Led by expert guides and streamed live from Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, A Warden’s Welcome interactive talks tell the history and stories of the palaces using exclusive images and film footage.

The landscape of the historic palace garden dates back to the 1820s when George IV turned Buckingham House into a palace.

Despite being situated in the heart of central London, it is home to an array of flora and fauna, including rare native plants, more than 1,000 trees, the National Collection of Mulberry Trees and 320 different wildflowers and grasses.

A book due to be published next week details the many tactics used to increase biodiversity and restore delicate ecosystems.

Claire Masset, author of Buckingham Palace: A Royal Garden, reveals that an island nestled on the lake was left largely untouched and had been treated differently to the rest of the gardens for more than a century.

“Even during Queen Victoria’s time the island was looked after differently from the rest of the garden,” it says.

“Wilder, shadier and generally more overgrown, it acted as a refuge for nesting birds.

“This remains true today. In fact, the island is now a rich and finely balanced ecosystem: an oasis within an oasis.”