London for Free: The Garden at 120

Update July 2021: The Garden at 120 is temporarily closed until further notice. Please check their website before your visit.

The Garden at 120 is a roof top garden located atop the newly opened Fen Court office building at 120 Fenchurch Street (London EC3). It opened to the public in February 2019 and entry is free of charge – just turn up and take the lift up. Current opening hour is 10am-6:30pm (till 9pm during summer hours) weekdays.

We visited during one of their two six-weekend trial periods and there was a queue when we got there an hour before closing time. We just managed to scrape in. In fact, we were two of the last 20 people to be let in for that day.

There were friendly and helpful security people to guide visitors both downstairs and up in the roof garden. After going through a brief security check, we took the lift to the 15^th floor.

It is currently the largest roof garden in London. The space is clean, spacious and modern, with fruit trees, benches and a water feature.

The roof garden offers impressive 360-degree views of the city. What is quite exceptional about The Garden at 120 is that as it is only on the 15^th floor, you can really see details of surrounding buildings. Some of the famous London landmarks and buildings you can view from the garden are: The Gherkin,

Tower of London, Tower Bridge and City Hall,

The Walkie Talkie, London eye, St Paul’s cathedral and the Loyd’s building,

Canary Wharf, and of course, the Shard.

The visit to The Garden at 120 turned out to be a lot more exciting than I had initially expected. I really enjoyed the beautiful garden and the intimate and unique views of the surrounding buildings. I don’t know if their weekend opening hours are going to be permanent at some point, but I would absolutely love to visit again. I can tell already that this is going to become one of our ‘go to’ spots to take our visitors in future.