Inside ‘secret’ mini jungle hidden behind busy road – locals don’t even know it’s there
A MAJOR UK city has a “secret” mini jungle hidden behind a busy road – locals don’t even know it’s there.
Asteys Row Rock Garden is tucked behind a thoroughfare in Islington, north London.
The mini jungle has hanging tropical shrubs and huge boulders lining its maze-like paths – making visitors feel like they have paddled up the Congo or Amazon into an unknown wilderness.
But the rock garden is just ten minutes away from the nearest Tube stop and only two minutes from the local train station.
Imposing gates stand at the bounds of the park, which is dominated by massive rocks.
Local Ian Mansfield wrote: “The amazing thing is that you could easily walk along the Essex Road for years without noticing that just a few yards to one side is this long rock garden.”
The park is ideal for children, with a playground complete with swings, slide and climbing apparatus nearby.
It stands on what was once the New River – a sprawling 42-mile man-made stream, opened in 1613, which ferried fresh water from Hertford to London.
Highbrow joker Charles Lamb slammed the artificial waterway as a “Mockery of a river—liquid artifice—wretched conduit! henceforth rank with canals, and sluggish aqueducts.”
Lamb was baffled when his blind poet friend George Dyer stumbled into the river – adding that it was embarrassing to drown in a river without any swans, nymphs or even a name.
The southern end of the New River was covered up in the 1890s, with the mini jungle built over it in 1913.
It comes as a new mini-Hollywood with “stacked studios” is set to open in a major UK city – but residents say they don’t want it even if it brings Ryan Reynolds to the area.
A picturesque UK town has doubled for the Netherlands in movies – including an amazing James Bond chopper scene.