The gardens of the Natural History Museum in London will be transformed into an urban nature center
south kensington is a district of London known internationally for its free museums – especially the Victoria & Albert and the Museum of Natural History as well as the magnificent Royal Albert Hall auditorium -, and now the project Urban Nature seeks to found in this neighborhood, one of the least green in the capital, an urban biodiversity center with a global reach.
Under the premise that it has never been more important than now to make our cities healthy and sustainable places in which to live, the Urban Nature project ( Urban Nature Project ), supported by Sir David Attenborough , will convert the more than two hectares of gardens of the central London Museum of Natural History into a paradigm of biodiversity in the framework of an urban environment.
The gardens of the Natural History Museum in London will be transformed into an urban nature center
In addition to being a research center for the urban wildlife and conservation , this project seeks to raise awareness among the population so that they reconnect with the environment and biodiversity in urban settings. In 2018 the museum, founded in 1881, became the fourth most visited attraction in all United Kingdom with more than five million visitors from all over the world . Based on these figures, the impact that this garden could have on a global level is significant.
The project has the support of naturalist and television star Sir David Attenborough . Following the announcement last week that the project had been greenlit, the British nonagenarian said, according to museum sources, that this project will enable young people to fall in love with the nature around them and develop a lifelong interest and concern for the environment.
The gardens of the Natural History Museum in London will be transformed into an urban nature center
The project seeks lead an urban nature movement through an apprenticeship program for youth, families, and schools across the country. To that end, the project will develop and offer online and face-to-face courses – its facilities They will have a school -, citizen science programs -that is, scientific research that has the active participation of non-specialists in collaboration with scientists-, and a “living” scientific laboratory, in which the museum’s existing scientific work will continue.
Attenborough's celebrated words, " The future of the natural world, on which we all depend, is in your hands ” will be engraved in bronze at one of the entrances to the museum.
The gardens of the Natural History Museum in London will be transformed into an urban nature center
This is not the first transformation that the museum gardens will see. Originally, when the museum was built at the end of the 19th century, the land on which the current gardens are located was reserved for a future building expansion . However, the lack of funds ended up causing the building to be smaller, and the gardens were finally opened to the public years after the museum opened . During the First World War the gardens became a urban garden where they planted from potatoes to cauliflowers . In 1995 the west wing of the garden was transformed into the Wildlife Garden , with the aim of putting practice the creation of natural habitats and the conservation . The Urban Garden project will transform them again. In this new stage, the most significant change at the structural level will be that the east and west wings of the gardens will be joined for the first time.
During its almost century and a half of life, the spaces of the museum have been transformed, but the mission, to explain the history of life on Earth, has not changed. The works will begin in 2021 and the transformation of the gardens is expected to be ready in 2023.