Mona's Garden

About Mona's Garden

This award-winning garden is home to the ‘Corokia’ National Collection along with a great number of other unusual Australasian, mainly New Zealand, Mediterranean and Exotic plants complemented by perennials and grasses which thrive thanks to 300 tons of topsoil, gravel and compost brought in by wheelbarrow. Emphasis is on structure, shapes, texture and contrasting foliage provided by the many distinctively pruned evergreen shrubs, trees, grasses and bamboos,

The very long garden is entered via steep but safe steps, a good viewing place for the living Sedum roof which covers the greenhouse and the Corten steel panel. After a first section where a centrepiece fountain and mature Mediterranean and Southern hemisphere shrubs and trees are framed by a hedge (the box, a recent victim of the box caterpillar, now replaced by rare Corokia, Santolina, Olearia, Ilex crenata and Lophomyrtus), a meandering path flanked by a long border either side, leads to a wider more intimate space integrating raised beds, a Corokia hedge, a bog area and a mound. The focal point is a ‘stage’ of small terraces showcasing unusual Corokias.

The newly acquired 600 square meters of garden extension has been transformed from a wasteland into a sustainable new garden featuring an exotic and woodland area and a mini prairie all packed with unusual and interesting plants. The story of the new garden is featured in Mona’s latest book ‘Branching Out’, and is available to purchase on her website: www.monasgarden.co.uk

Following the recent tie-up between Perennial and Mona’s Garden, an announcement was made in the April 2022 issue of the RHS The Garden magazine p10, with the caption ‘Mona’s Garden to Live On’. Also published in the August 2024 edition of the magazine ‘The Simple Things’ an article entitled ‘Planting for …posterity’ on page 53.

‘A London garden home to unusual Mediterranean and Australasian plants (see RHS The Garden magazine, March 2022, pp 84-90), created by owner Mona Abboud, is to be left to the charity Perennial in her will. Mona began her garden in 2000 and it includes the Plant Heritage National Plant Collection of Corokia. It is also open to the public through the National Gardens Scheme. Perennial, which supports people who work in horticulture, is expanding its portfolio, and Mona’s Garden will become its fourth but first domestic garden. It joins York Gate, Leeds; Fullers Mill, Suffolk; and The Laskett, Herefordshire.’

For blogs, videos and further information visit www.monasgarden.co.uk and monasgardenlondon on Instagram.