What is it? Walking down a rail-side industrial backstreet, an ornate wrought iron entrance with busy events and wildlife sightings boards assures passers-by that this is no ordinary green patch. Within lie a shoebox wetland, a wildflower meadow and mixed woodlands, attracting avian, mammalian, amphibious and arthropod refugees from far and wide. Where is it? A little two acre patch of Farthing Wood in brownfields Camden, Camley Street is a haven known to many......

What is it? We happened to stumble by accident across Gillespie Park, a little-known North London nature reserve, a few years ago, and have loved it ever since. Where is it? Squeezed neatly into a little plot of land in N5 above Arsenal tube and below a busy train line, amidst Highbury's densely-packed Victorian rows. Islington is the London borough with the least amount of parkland, so Gillespie offers a bucolic break for locals.......

What is it? Despite its name, Belsize Park is overwhelmingly residential. But the few patches of green that can be found hereabouts all have their secrets to tell. The gardens on Antrim Grove are no exception, containing two motifs of a vanished London (see below). The site was formerly occupied by school tennis courts, but was converted into a public space shortly after WWII. According to Camden Council, the neighbouring allotments (27 plots) have......

When Boris scrapped The Londoner he was fulfilling a pledge to divert the money to tree planting and 'protect and preserve' our open spaces. Today it was announced that we'll be able to vote for our local park to get a slice of the £6m pie set aside for the Priority Parks project. Taking a leaf out of reality TV's preferred way of doing things, he told the BBC: Londoners know best which areas......

If Kew Gardens is overwhelming in its scale, why not try lots of little gardens instead? This weekend, 173 gardens around town open their gates to the public. Many are not normally accessible unless you enjoy a name like Abramovich or Chumley-Warner. Some offer wine tasting, others put on fetes and festivals, and some remain quiet for you to enjoy the tranquility of artificial nature. The list of sites participating in Open Garden Squares......

We've spent enough time wading through the flytipped rubbish on our street or struggling to blast the grime off our bodies following a grubby commute home to realise that London's not exactly the cleanest of places. But is it really the dirtiest city in Europe? In a shameless promotion, travel experts Trip Advisor commissioned a survey asking tourists to rank their likes and dislikes across a number of continental destinations, and London cleaned up......

The arthritic pygmy goats of Clissold Park will be hobbling for joy. Hackney's favourite place, as voted for by borough residents in a 2007 poll, and venue for the yearly Stokefest fun, is set for a £8.9 million revamp. We brought you the news of Cedric the rabbit last year, whose ears were flapping with excitement about the park winning a significant lottery grant. Well, Hackney Council have ponied up another £4.1 million, and......

Fed up of the froth, mirth and sentimentality of the Yuletide muzak yet? To bring you an antidote and alternative soundtrack for your Christmas holidays we caught up with the utterly charming Roi Robertson of Mechanical Cabaret over a sorbet and peppermint tea and ruminated on the band's latest single, pastoral London views and the fact that we've never seen him and Noel Fielding in the same room together... Who's in the band? I......

Hackney Council's Parks Services has urged dog owners to stop their pets from 'strengthening their jaws' on park trees. Apparently, some dog owners are too cheap to buy their pets toys to munch on, and encourage them to chew on bark or—get this—hang from the branches of live trees in several of the borough's parks. This has caused severe damage to some 100 trees in the past few years. The Parks Services have been......

Today, they came from the stars, i saw them are recording an XFM session and on 9 November, will be transmitting a BBC 6music Marc Riley session. We suggest you tune in. Some press people tried to describe them here and, mashed together in a tag cloud, they probably do quite a good composite job. We leave it for you to decide if they are visionary pop genii from another inspired planet or truly......

Despite the odd recent mishap, London's lidos take their rightful alongside our parks as great places to go around the capital. 70 years ago lidos were people's cathedrals, masterful municipal palaces to promote community health and wellbeing. Over the years since then they have been left derelict or sold off. But now, they are having their renaissance. Blame global warming for warmer temperatures or the Olympics for increased interest in health - but outdoor pools......

Next week our beleaguered government will be announcing innovative new policies aimed at tackling the public health time bomb of increasingly fat and lazy Londoners. GPs will be prescribing - wait for it - exercise, of all things, and dishing out maps of local parks to encourage us urban, sedentary types to get out there and get fit. Genius, frankly. As long as they don't charge £6.65 per map. Foresight, a government research unit......

The sixth in our series of interviews with potential candidates for next year's Mayoral election. Previously: Victoria Borwick (Tory), Andrew Boff (Tory) and Warwick Lightfoot (Tory), Sian Berry (Green), Fiyaz Mughal (Lib Dem). Chris Prior is an independent mayoral candidate standing on a very firm 'Stop Congestion Charging' ticket. We asked him why, and, as with all the other candidates, we also enquired whether he'd ever been sick on the Tube. Chris is the......

18. The Cheetah Of Shooter's Hill Over the years many ‘flaps’ of ‘big cat’ sightings have hit the headlines, from the so-called ‘beasts’ of Exmoor and Bodmin, to the more recent Bluewater leopard Bexley ‘big cat’. However in south-east London during the early 1960s, the Shooter’s Hill ‘cheetah’ scare was on everyone’s lips – back during a time when such cats were considered extremely mythical and were often misunderstood and wrongly identified, but were......

From BBC News: London must become car-free if it is to substantially cut carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new report. Crikey. In response to the findings London Green Party member Jenny Jones said: "I have asked the London mayor to do a feasibility study into creating a car free pedestrian zone in central London linking all the main squares and parks. "We need to show that the car no longer rules in London......

Arguably the best city in the world for a music fan to live, pop legends come to play in London all the time. Often not only do they come for just one gig, but they stay for a while when they could easily make haste for the comforts of their own homes to eat biscuits and play video games. Prince recently played the O2 for three full weeks, Sonic Youth resided at the Roundhouse......

16. Strange Invaders Whilst residing at his terraced house in Kentish Town, during the 1980s, Christopher Fowler began to notice glimpses of unusual whitish creatures in his back garden. After finally finding the time to fully investigate, and to dismiss such possible hallucinations on his own behalf, Mr Fowler was astounded to discover several albino lobster-like critters, which plagued his yard for several months. A friend of Mr Fowler’s, whilst visiting one evening, almost......

Londonist has long feared swans, as we've always been told that swans can break a man's arm, and a bird that is in the habit of breaking arms is a bird to be wary of. (And yes, apparently that is true. According to The Swan Sanctuary, Shepperton, it is theoretically possible. Therefore, we remain theoretically afraid of swans.) However, just because a bird could possibly break your limbs, that's no reason to develop hostilities......

Bug bites of all kinds are annoying. We can't think that anyone actually likes the itchiness and general uncomfortableness that comes with being bitten by an insect. And we're all aware that bites received on holiday can be potentially deadly. However, we don't usually think that bug bites here at home anything to get worried about. Diseases caught through bug bites aren't just for holidays though. Peter Kemp of Teddington noticed three tick bites......

The second of our interviews with the Tory candidates for London Mayor. Previously, Andrew Boff. Victoria Borwick is a born and bred London lass whose Mayoral campaign carries the tagline 'A red head not Red Ken'. She has 25 years of management experience and is currently a councillor for Kensington and Chelsea. She has four children, doesn't like tinny techno and knows a thing or two about Cleopatra's Needle. But does she have the......

If you’re looking for a new place to live, and want to live more greenly at the same time, Londonist has discovered the perfect tool to help you: Walk Score. A cunning twist on Google Maps, give it a postcode and it’ll calculate how many useful things, such as shops, restaurants, cinemas, schools and parks, are within a mile of your house. Meaning you can use your car less, get fitter, save money and......

England's volleyball officianados are not allowing the capital's lack of any beach worth lazing on to get in the way of bringing to town the spectacle considered by many to be more appropriately featured in the opening shots of a CSI: Miami episode than the Olympics. The Hub in Regents Park's north west corner is the setting for the Volleyball England Beach Tour that started yesterday with an Open tournament which concludes today, Sunday......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 30th July 1966: England defeat West Germany in the FIFA World Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, claiming the Jules Rimet Trophy (and, of course, the status of Football World Champions for the next four years). Tuesday – 31st July 1962: Violence erupts at a rally of the Union Movement (formerly known as the British Union of Fascists) in Dalston, East London. Sir Oswald Mosely, leader of the......

While we always encourage you to get out and about to enjoy all the great things in London that we hear about - talking in toilets, the stars, graffiti, cool clubs, groovy gigs and nice parks in one week alone - we also like to share the joys of staying in. The pleasures of curling up on the sofa with your very own Londonist selection of TV highlights could actually save your life and......

Only a fortnight to go now before central London is engulfed by the two-wheeled juggernaut of the world's most celebrated race. "Le Grand Depart" is the title given to the weekend of sport and festivities from 6th - 8th July that marks the first visit to the UK capital of the Tour de France, a cycling contest in the same way that a royal wedding is a quiet ceremony in a local family church.......

There are plenty of nice places to walk around in the posh Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC): Kensington Palace, Kings Road, Harvey Nichols... Streets, parks, palaces and shops are all a shade nicer than the rest of town but only a very select handful of privileged people get to call it local. You jammy gits. Nonetheless, this summer, the Arts Service team of the RBKC have kindly put together a lovely little......

Camberwell Arts, Camberwell College of Arts and South London Gallery are marshalling local talent and mounting the annual Camberwell Arts Festival which runs from tomorrow to next Sunday, 24 June. Camberwell Arts Festival is all about the artistic activity in the area - and judging by the enormous festival programme, there's clearly a lot of it about. SE5 isn't the hottest of spots in London the rest of the year but for the next......

Elvis lookalike caught selling guns. Presumably will soon be doing the jailhouse rock. Choose the 'first record' to be played at Wembley. Damien Hirst and others design new deckchairs for Royal Parks. They're dead good. Police building database of dogging/cruising spots around London. Would you like us to map this? The Olympics are apparently a 'magnet' for sexual activity. Just don't mention rings. Introducing Michelin, the hugely inflated hedgehog. Image courtesy of See Wah......

We all know that London is one of the largest, most exciting, cosmopolitan, multi-cultural cities in the world. What other city combines huge amounts of history, taxi drivers who actually know where they're going, a pub every ten metres, fantastic parks for lazy Sundays, and more live theatre and music than you can shake a stick at? None that we can think of. That's why we all live here, after all. Two London comedians......

This is the latest version of the Doon Street Tower, a skyscraper proposed by Coin Street Community Builders to sit on the South Bank near the OXO Tower. Designed by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, the scheme had previously proven controversial thanks to its loftiness, which would have made it visible from a number of viewpoints including St James’s Park and the courtyard of Somerset House. Complaints came from the usual suspects including English Heritage, the......